LIBRARY 

OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


r 


STUDIES 


IN  THE 


LIFE    OF   CHRIST 


BY  THE 

Rev.    a.    M.    FAIRBAIRN,    D.  D., 

PRINCIPAL  OF   AIREDALE    COLLEGE,    BRADFORD, 

AND    AUTHOR   OF 

"STUDIES   IN  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   RELIGION   AND   HISTORY." 


NEW   YORK: 
APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 
1902. 


IT30 

?3 


^^SBAl 


jf;c'y^'  \ 


THIS    BOOK 

IS   DEDICATED, 

IN 

LOVING  GRATITUDE  AND  FILIAL  REVERENCE, 

TO 


1 MOB 62 


PREFACE. 


These  "Studies  in  the  Life  of  Christ"  were  originally 
prepared  as  a  series  of  Sunday  evening  discourses,  while 
the  author  was  a  minister  in  Aberdeen.  This  is  stated, 
partly,  that  he  may  connect  them  with  a  city  and  people 
he  will  always  love,  and,  partly,  that  he  may  thus  most 
simply  define  their  real  character  and  limits.  They  are 
not  exhaustive  and  critical  discussions  on  the  Gospel 
History,  but,  at  most,  attempts  at  orientation — at  reach- 
ing points  of  view  from  which  the  life  of  Christ  may  be 
understood  and  construed. 

The  author  hopes,  should  life  and  health  be  granted  to 
him,  to  return  to  this  greatest  of  all  Histories,  and  deal 
with  it  in  a  more  critical  and  comprehensive  spirit ; 
especially  in  its  relations  to  contemporary  history,  and  in 
its  action,  through  the  Apostles  and  the  Church,  on  the 
creation  of  Christianity.  Meanwhile  he  sends  this  volume 
forth  in  the  hope  that  it  may  help  to  make  the  Person  it 
seeks  to  interpret  more  real,  living,  and  loveable  to  the 
men  of  to-day. 

Airedale  College,  Bradford, 
November f  1880. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGB 
I. 

THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS    .  .  ,  •  .  •         .  I 


II. 

THE  NARRATIVES  OF  THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY,  .  .  30 

III. 
THE  GROWTH  AND  EDUCATION  OF  JESUS  :  HIS  PERSONALITY  46 

IV. 
THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST  •••«.•  64 

V. 

THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST  #»,.•.  80 

VI. 

THE  NEW  TEACHER;  THE  KINGDOM  OF  HEAVEN     .  .  •  99 

vn. 

GALILEE,  JUD^A,  SAMARIA II3 

VIII. 
THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES     ••••••        I30 


viii  CONTENTS. 

IX. 

THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES  ..,-..,  I49 

X. 

JESUS  AND  THE  JEWS l6S 

XL 
THE  LATER  TEACHING    •  •  •  •  I  ,  «  •  1 82 

XII. 
THE  LATER  MIRACLES         •  •  «  •  •  T  •  •        197 

XIII. 

JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM       ,  .  •  .  .  .  .  219 

XIV. 
GETHSEMANE       .  ,  .  • 239 

XV. 

THE  BETRAYER         .........  258 

XVI. 
THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL       .  .  •  .  .  .        280 

XVII. 
THE  CRUCIFIXION  •  • •  308 

XVIIL 
THE  RESURRECTION  ,  .         .  •  .  T  •         .  •       33I 


I. 

THE  HISTORICAL   CONDITIONS. 

The  greatest  problems  in  the  field  of  history  centre  in 
the  Person  and  Life  of  Christ.     Who  He  was,  what  He 
was,  how  and  why  He  came  to  be  it,  are  questions  that 
have  not  lost  and  will  not  lose  their  interest  for  us  and 
for  mankind.     For  the  problems  that  centre  in  Jesus  have 
this  peculiarity :  they  are  not  individual,  but  general — 
concern  not  a  person,  but  the  world.     How  we  are  to 
judge  Him  is  not  simply  a  curious  point  for  historical 
criticism,  but  a  vital  matter  for  religion.     Jesus  Christ  is 
the  most  powerful  spiritual  force  that  ever  operated  for 
good  on  and  in  humanity.     He  is  to-day  what  He  has 
been  for  centuries — an  object  of  reverence  and  love  to  the 
good,  the  cause  of  remorse  and  change,  penitence  and 
hope  to  the  bad  ;  of  moral  strength  to  the  morally  weak, 
of  inspiration  to  the  despondent,  consolation  to  the  deso- 
late, and  cheer  to  the  dying.     He  has  created  the  typical 
virtues  and  moral  ambitions  of  civilized  man  ;  has  been  to 
the  benevolent  a  motive  to  beneficence,  to  the  selfish  a 
persuasion  to  self-forgetful  obedience  ;  and  has  become  the 
living  ideal  that  has  steadied  and  raised,  awed  and  guided 
youth,    braced   and   ennobled    manhood,    mellowed    and 
beautified  age.     In   Him  the  Christian  ages  have  seen 
the  manifested  God,  the  Eternal  living  in  time,  the  Infinite 
within  the  limits  of  humanity ;  and  their  faith  has  glorified 


2  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

His  sufferings  into  a  sacrifice  by  the  Creator  for  the 
creature,  His  death  into  an  atonement  for  human  sin. 
No  other  life  has  done  such  work,  no  other  person 
been  made  to  bear  such  transcendent  and  mysterious 
meanings.  It  is  impossible  to  touch  Jesus  without 
touching  millions  of  hearts  now  living  or  yet  to  live. 
He  is,  whatever  else  He  may  be,  as  a  world's  imperish- 
able wonder,  a  world's  everlasting  problem,  as  a  pre- 
eminent object  of  human  faith,  a  pre-eminent  subject  of 
human  thought. 

For  the  very  greatness  of  the  work  makes  it  the  more 
necessary  that  we  see  the  Worker,  not  as  He  lives  in  our 
faith  and  reverence,  but  as  He  lived  on  our  common  earth; 
a  man  looking  before  and  after,  speaking  as  a  man,  and 
spoken  to  by  men.  But  this  is  no  easy  matter.  Hardly 
any  man  can  come  to  the  problems  that  centre  in  Jesus  as  to 
the  problems  of  the  purer  sciences,  those  that  can  be  solved 
by  the  passionless  processes  of  mathematics.  The  name 
of  Christ  is  a  representative  name.  It  means  Christianity. 
Men  who  are  convinced  that  the  religion  is  false,  assail  it 
through  its  Founder;  men  who  believe  that  it  is  true,  defend 
it  through  His  Person.  They  too  much  interdespise  each 
other  to  be  altogether  fair  to  history.  The  former  reproach 
the  latter  with  being  apologists — men  whose  primary  aim 
is  not  to  find  the  truth,  but  to  defend  what  has  been,  with 
or  without  sufficient  reason,  believed ;  the  latter  seek  to 
silence  the  former  by  censure,  charging  them  with  ration- 
alism or  unbelief,  with  being  men  who  love  what  is  nega- 
tive, and  hate  what  is  positive.  Yet  it  were  well  if  both 
classes  could  unite  to  help  each  other.  The  one  interest 
that  is  common  to  both  is  the  truth.  To  find  it  is  here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  grand  necessity ;  yet  without  the  clear  eye 
and  open  mind  it  cannot  be  found.  By  all  means  let  us 
get  near  enough  to  Jesus  to  see  Him  as  He  really  was. 
The  river  is  inexplicable  without  its  source ;  Christianity  a 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  3 

mystery,  an  unread  riddle,  without  Christ.  If  the  stream 
does  not  disgrace  the  fountain,  the  fountain  will  not  dis- 
grace the  stream.  If  Christianity  does  not  make  Christ 
ashamed,  Christ  will  not  shame  Christianity.  The  Founder 
is  greater  than  the  faith  He  founded,  as  mind  is  nobler  than 
all  its  works.  However  highly  the  Christian  religion  may 
be  rated,  the  religion  of  Christ,  revealfed  in  His  words, 
articulated  in  His  person,  ought  to  be  more  highly  rated 
still.  The  ideal  is  ever  above  the  real.  The  picture 
painted  on  the  canvas  is  poor  compared  with  its  image  in 
the  painter's  mind.  The  palace  or  temple  built  in  stone 
but  feebly  realizes  the  ideal  of  the  great  architect.  The 
universe  is  but  a  poor  and  inadequate  expression  of  the 
Divine  thought.  God  is  greater  than  the  universe,  and 
His  thought  than  all  things.  So  we  may  be  certain  that, 
whatever  our  faith  or  our  fancy  may  imagine  Jesus  to  have 
been,  the  reality  was  greater  than  our  dream.  True  faith 
proves  its  truth  by  its  willingness  to  use  all  the  lights 
of  modern  science  and  all  the  eyes  of  modern  criticism, 
that  it  may  get  the  nearer  to  the  historical  Christ,  con- 
vinced that  it  can  look  in  His  face  without  fear  and  without 
dismay.  The  men  that  best  knew  Him  most  loved  Him, 
and  to  stand  in  His  immediate  presence  is  to  be  touched 
with  a  deeper  reverence  than  can  be  awakened  by  the 
broken  image  reflected  in  the  traditions  or  phantasies  of 
men. 

Strauss,  in  one  of  his  most  satirical  moods,  said,  "  The 
critical  study  of  the  life  of  Jesus  is  the  pit  into  which  the 
theology  of  our  age  necessarily  fell,  and  was  destroyed."  ^ 
But  the  precise  opposite  is  the  truth.  There  is  no  study 
that  has  so  renovated  and  vivified  theology,  that  has  so 
tended  to  translate  it  from  an  arid  scholasticism  into  a 
humane  and  fruitful  science  of  religion.  The  historical 
Christ  is  the  eternal  rock  down  to  which  Christian  science 
»  Das  Leben  Jesufiir  das  deutsche  Volk,  p.  5. 


4  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

must  dig,  and  on  which  it  must  build,  if  our  religion  is 
to  live ;  He  is  the  everlasting  and  sunlit  mountain  up 
which  our  thought  must  climb,  if  we  are  ever  to  stand 
where  Moses  stood,  and,  like  him,  see  God  face  to  face. 
And  this  necessity  reposes  on  a  twofold  reason,  (i)  The 
historical  person  of  Christ  is  at  once  the  basis  and  source 
of  the  Christian  religion.  He  made  it,  He  is  it.  Its 
distinctive  and  essential  elements  are  elements  that  can 
be  found  in  Him.  Whatever  cannot  be  found  there  be- 
longs to  its  accidents,  not  to  its  essence.  And  so  the 
better  we  know  Him,  the  better  we  know  our  faith;  the 
more  He  is  made  a  reality  to  heart  and  mind,  the  more 
will  it  be  the  same.  He  who  best  knows  Christ  is  the 
best  Christian.  (2)  Knowledge  of  the  historical  and  per- 
sonal Christ  is  necessary  to  the  knowledge  and  realization 
of  the  Christian  religion.  An  abstract  theology  is  but  a 
speculative  system,  necessary,  perhaps,  to  satisfy  the  in- 
tellect, and  be  to  it,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  an  explication  of  the  universe  of  nature  and 
man.  But  religion  is  concrete  and  complex,  must  stand 
before  us  articulated  in  a  person,  that  persons  may  know 
what  it  is,  and  how  it  is  to  be  realized.  There  may  be  a 
science  of  religion,  but  religion  is  not  a  science,  is  rather 
the  richest  reality  science  can  investigate.  But  to  be  a 
reality  it  must  be  embodied  in  thought  and  feeling,  in 
action  and  conduct — z.e.,  in  a  person  or  persons.  It  has 
no  being  till  it  is  so  embodied,  but  is  the  moment  it  is 
personalized.  And  he  who  first  embodies  it  is  its  creative 
personality,  the  one  in  whom  it  lives,  moves,  and  has 
its  being.  And  Christ  is  here  our  creative  personality. 
Christianity  must  be  studied  as  it  was  realized  in  Him,  and 
only  as  men  embody  His  ideal  do  they  remain  Christians, 
or  does  the  Christian  religion  continue  to  live.  The  one 
thing  that  can  lift  the  churches  of  to-day  above  the 
sectional  in  character  and  aim,  above  the  mean  jealousies 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  5 

and  ungenerous  rivalries  of  a  miserable  ecclesiasticism,  is 
a  loving  and  sympathetic  study  of  the  Christianity  of 
Christ.  Here,  indeed,  the  first  is  the  best,  and  the 
divinest  ambition  is  to  be  religious  not  after  the  manner 
of  the  churches,  but  after  the  manner  and  in  the  Spirit  of 
Jesus  the  Christ. 

We  start,  then,  from  this  position.'  The  person  of 
Christ  is  the  explanation  of  Christianity,  its  first  cause, 
its  perennial  inspiration,  its  imperishable  ideal.  In  Him 
our  religion  was  first  realized,  and  by  Him  created.  But 
have  we  any  right  so  to  regard  Him  ?  He  lived  like  all 
of  us  under  and  within  the  conditions  of  space  and  time, 
was  an  Heir  to  the  past  before  He  was  a  Creator  of  the 
future.  Was  He  not,  then,  made  by  His  historical  con- 
ditions ?  Were  not  they  the  forces  that  formed  Christ, 
rather  than  the  Spirit  that  lived  within  Him  ?  These 
questions  suggest  some  of  our  gravest  problems  ; — 

What  does  our  religion  owe  to  Jesus,  and  what  to  Judaea 
and  the  Jews?  Is  it  the  ripe  fruit  of  His  Spirit,  or  the  fair 
and  final  blossom  of  dying  Judaism  ?  Was  He  its  legiti- 
mate, though  outcast  and  hated.  Son  ?  Was  He  created 
by  His  circumstances,  the  child  of  a  land  and  people 
prodigal  of  choicest  gifts  and  propitious  opportunities  ? 
Was  He  but  a  Voice,  throwing  into  memorable  and  im- 
mortal speech  the  truths  given  Him  by  the  fathers  of  His 
people  and  the  schools  of  His  faith  ?  These  are  questions 
history  and  historical  criticism  alone  can  exhaustively 
discuss,  but  at  the  first  blush  only  one  answer  seems 
possible.  Circumstances  may  be  plausibly  thought  to 
make  a  man  where  they  are  equal  to  his  making,  where 
he  does  not  conspicuously  transcend  all  th-^y  are  and 
contain.  But  where  he  does,  it  were  as  absurd  to  make 
the  circumstances  create  the  man  as  to  make  the  night 
create  the  day,  because  after  and  out  of  the  dark  comes 
the  light.  Jesus  was  born  in  Judaea  and  nursed  in  Judaism, 


6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

but  He  rose  out  of  them  as  the  sun  rises  out  of  the  grey 
dawn  to  pour  his  beams  over  heaven  and  earth,  and  flood 
them  with  the  glories  of  light  and  colour.  Jesus  was  the 
antithesis  and  contradiction  of  the  conditions  amid  which 
He  grew.  By  His  coming  they  were  changed,  and  in  all 
their  distinctive  features  annihilated.  What  He  brought 
with  Him  was  so  much  more  than  they  contained,  that 
passing  from  Judaism  to  Jesus  is  like  passing  from  the  hill 
top  tipped  with  the  cold  but  beautiful  dawn  to  a  plain 
lying  warm  and  radiant  under  the  unveiling  and  revealing 
light  of  the  summer  noonday. 

But  while  the  historical  conditions  do  not  explain  Jesus, 
without  them  He  cannot  be  either  explained  or  understood. 
The  mysterious  force  we  call  His  person  was  clothed  in 
natural  forms.  The  conditions  under  which  He  lived  were 
human  conditions.  He  was  open  and  sensitive  to  every 
influence,  inherited,  traditional,  social,  physical,  intel- 
lectual, moral,  religious,  that  can  affect  man.  He  was 
a  son,  a  brother,  and  a  friend.  He  was  a  Jew  by  birth, 
speech,  and.  education,  and  the  Spirit,  the  Gm/,  of  His 
land  and  people  and  time  worked  on  and  in  Him  with  its 
plastic  hands.  Where  He  was  divinely  set  there  He  must 
be  humbly  studied,  and  only  as  He  is  so  studied  can  it  be 
seen  how  He  resembles  "  the  bright  consummate  flower  " 
which  crowns  the  months  of  culture  and  of  growth,  and 
yet,  when  it  bursts  into  blossom,  beauty,  and  fragrance,  is 
so  unlike  the  dark  earth,  hard  seed,  and  green  stem  out  of 
which  it  has  grown. 

The  question  as  to  the  causes  and  conditions  which  con- 
tributed to  form  its  founder,  is  one  of  the  deepest  moment 
to  every  religion.  It  helps  to  determine  its  claims,  the 
degree  in  which  it  has  been  a  discoverer  or  revealer  of 
new  truths,  a  creator  of  fresh  moral  forces  for  humanity, 
a  minister  to  the  happiness  and  progress  of  man.  It  helps, 
too,  to  determine  our  estimate  of  its  creative  personality. 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  7 

to  show  him  as  a  maker  or  an  adapter,  as  one  who 
depraved  by  his  touch  or  transfigured  by  his  spirit  what 
he  found  before  and  around  him,  becoming  to  after  ages 
the  embodiment  of  the  most  deteriorative  or  the  most 
regenerative  influences.  Thus  the  question  as  to  the 
century  in  which  Buddha  was  born,  and  the  circumstances 
amid  which  he  Hved,  powerfully  affect  our  criticism  both 
of  the  man  and  his  religion.  It  affects  our  interpretation 
of  its  most  characteristic  doctrines,  our  judgment  as  to  its 
relation  on  the  one  hand  to  the  Sankhya  philosophy,  and 
on  the  other  to  Brahmanism  and  to  the  political  move- 
ments of  India ;  and  these,  again,  influence  our  estimate 
of  a  religion  that  is  at  once  so  rich  in  ethical  spirit  and  so 
poor  in  intellectual  content.  Buddha,  regarded  as  a  man 
who  simply  translates  metaphysical  into  religious  doc- 
trines, and  precipitates  a  political  by  converting  it  into 
a  religious  revolution,  is  a  less  original  and  beautiful 
character  than  the  Buddha  who  so  pities  man  and  so 
hates  his  sorrow  as  to  find  for  him  by  suffering  and  sacri- 
fice the  way  to  everlasting  rest,  the  path  to  the  blessed 
'Nirvana,  And  so,  too,  with  Islam  and  its  founder.  If 
Mohammed  be  compared  with  his  heathen  contemporaries 
and  their  ancestors,  and  his  system  with  theirs,  he  can 
only  profit  by  the  comparison,  stand  out  as  a  pre-eminent 
religious  genius  and  benefactor  of  his  country  and  kind. 
But  if  his  doctrines  be  traced  to  their  sources.  Judaic, 
Magian,  Christian,  if  it  be  found  that  he  depraved  what 
he  appropriated,  that  he  practised  what  his  own  pre- 
cepts forbade,  turned  his  sublimest  doctrine  into  a  battle- 
cry,  building  on  it  both  a  military  system  that  lived  by  the 
lust  of  conqust  and  a  civil  code  that  showed  little  mercy 
to  the  vanquished,  then  we  find  that  he  is  a  political  much 
more  than  a  religious  genius,  with  an  ultimate  personal 
influence  that  works  more  mightly  for  evil  than  his  law 
works  for  good.     Knowledge  of  the  historical  conditions 


8  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

may  thus  so  modify  as  to  change  from  favourable  to 
adverse  our  judgment  of  the  historical  person. 

Now  what  were  the  historical  conditions  under  which 
Jesus  was  formed  ?  Are  they  in  themselves  sufficient  to 
ex})lain  Him.  Did  they  embody  intellectual  and  spiritual 
forces  potent  enough  to  form  Him,  and,  through  Him, 
His  religion  ?  Was  He,  as  we  have  been  assured,  a  pupil 
of  the  rabbis  and  a  child  of  the  native  Judaic  culture?' 
Was  He  indeed  "  called  out  of  Egypt,"  a  Son  of  its  later 
wisdom,  educated  in  Alexandrian  philosophy  illumined  by 
the  light  that  lived  in  Aristobulus  and  Philo  ?  ^  Or  was 
He  by  the  accident  of  birth  a  Jew,  by  the  essential  qualities 
as  by  the  nurture  of  His  spirit  a  Greek,  gifted  with  the 
serene  soul  and  open  sense  of  ancient  Hellas, ^  softening 
by  His  Hellenic  nature  and  culture  the  stern  and  exalted 
truths  of  Hebraism  ?  It  is  impossible  to  discuss  here 
and  now  the  many  points  involved  in  these  questions  : 
all  that  is  possible  is  to  indicate  the  historical  conditions 
amid  which  He  lived,  His  relation  to  them,  and  theirs  to 
Him. 

I.  The  Land.  Modern  historical  thought  sufficiently 
recognizes  the  influence  of  a  country  and  climate  upon  a 
people,  upon  the  collective  nation  and  its  constituent 
units.  Physical  conditions  have  both  a  moral  and  an 
intellectual  worth.  The  great  people  and  the  great  man 
are  held  to  owe  much  to  nature  without,  as  well  as  to  the 

'  Salvator,  Jhus  Christ  et  sa  Doctrine.  Paris,  1838.  Renan, 
Vie  de  Jesus,  chap.  iii. 

*  So  Gfrorer  in  his  work,  Ueber  Philo  und  die  Alexandrinische 
Philosophie.  In  his  preface  he  declares  Christianity  to  be  a  mere  con- 
fused compound  of  Alexandrian  wisdom  without  any  originality.  In  his 
later  work,  Geschichte  des  Vrchristenthums,  he  seeks  to  trace  the  most 
distinctive  doctrines  of  the  New  Testament  and  the  oldest  Fathers  t  • 
rabbinical  sources  ;  and  the  New  Testament  history,  so  far  as  it  has  any 
affinity  with  Talmudical  legends,  to  rabbinical  traditions. 

3  Strauss,  Das  'Leben  Jesus  fUr  das  deutsche  Volk,  §  34, 


\ 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS,  9 

nature  within.  And  the  land  is  here  of  singular  signifi- 
cance, both  in  its  physical  and  historical  aspects  and 
influences.  It  was  small  but  goodly,  in  many  places  rich 
in  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  fair,  fragrant,  and  fertile  as  the 
garden  of  the  Lord.  It  was  a  land  of  hills  and  valleys, 
lakes  and  water-courses,  mountains  that  guarded,  streams 
that  made  glad  its  cities,  especially  queenly  Zion,  beautiful 
for  situation,  the  joy  of  the  whole  earth.  Shut  in  before 
by  the  sea,  behind  by  the  desert,  girt  and  guarded  to  the 
north  by  the  royal  ranges  of  Lebanon  and  the  lofty  heights 
of  Hermon,  to  the  south  by  waste  lands,  its  fruitful  plains, 
full  of  corn  and  wine,  seemed  to  the  wandering  sons  of 
the  desert  to  flow  with  milk  and  honey.  To  tribes  weary 
of  change  and  migration  in  the  wilderness,  Canaan  was  by 
pre-eminence  the  land  of  rest.  And  so  many  distinct  yet 
related  families  had  striven  for  a  foothold  and  a  home  in 
it,  for  room  on  its  plains  and  a  right  to  its  cities.  The 
sons  of  fathers  who  had  parted  as  kinsmen  in  the  desert 
met  as  foemen  on  the  plains,  as  invaders  and  invaded, 
as  Hebrews  and  Phoenicians.  On  the  coast  once  famous 
cities  stood,  the  cities  of  the  men  who  made  the  commerce 
of  the  ancient,  and,  through  it,  of  the  modern  world — men 
full  of  resource  and  invention  :  builders,  dyers,  carvers  of 
ivory,  weavers  of  rich  stuffs,  discoverers  of  the  secrets  the 
stars  can  whisper  to  the  seafaring,  bearers  of  manifold 
impulses  for  good  and  ill  to  the  cities  and  isles  of  Greece. 
On  the  one  side  lay  Egypt,  on  the  other  Assyria;  over 
and  through  the  land  that  intervened  they  had  fought  out 
their  rivalries,  and  made  their  names,  their  armies,  their 
civilizations  both  familiar  and  fearful  to  the  sons  of  Israel. 
But  though  they  and  the  later  and  mightier  empires  of 
Greece  and  Rome  might  conquer,  they  could  never  absoib 
Israel.  The  more  his  land  was  invaded  the  more  sacred 
it  became  to  him,  and  the  oftener  he  lost  his  freedom  to 
the  foreigner  the   more  hostile   and  inaccessible  did  he 


lo  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

grow  to  the  influences  by  which  the  victorious  alien  can 
assimilate  and  extinguish  the  vanquished. 

In  the  time  of  Jesus,  Palestine  existed  in  four  great 
divisions — a  northern,  central,  eastern,  and  southern : 
Galilee,  Samaria,  Perea,  and  Judaea.  Of  these,  only  the 
first  and  last  concern  us.  Galilee  was  the  richest  and 
most  varied  province,  Judsea  the  most  secluded  and  barren. 
In  the  north  Galilee  was  guarded  by  the  snowy  crown  of 
Hermon  and  the  wooded  slopes  of  Lebanon,  and  was  graced 
in  the  south  by  Carmel  and  Tabor  ;  while  in  the  south-east 
it  embosomed  the  lake  of  Gennesareth,  out  from  which 
opened  those  glorious  plains  that  were  to  the  fond  imagi- 
nation of  the  people  as  the  garden  of  God.  On  the  west 
its  table-land  overlooked  the  blue  sea,  where  went  the 
stately  "  ships  of  Tarshish,"  and  by  the  side  of  which 
stood  ancient  Tyre,  the  home  of  men  with  other  aims  and 
ambitions  than  had  been  known  to  Israel.  And  the  land 
was  rich  in  men,  the  fields  in  husbandmen,  the  towns  and 
villages  in  merchants,  the  lake  in  fishermen.  One  who 
knew  and  loved  it  said,  "  It  is  a  fertile  land  and  full  of 
meadows,  where  trees  of  every  kind  grow,  and  promises 
through  its  luxuriant  fruitfulness  a  rich  reward,  even  to 
the  most  miserable  husbandry."  ^  And  the  life  the  people 
lived  is  sketched  foi*  us  by  many  a  quiet  touch  in  the 
Gospels.  In  the  market-place  labourers  wait  to  be  hired,* 
and  children  dance  and  sing,  sport  and  quarrel.^  In  the 
highways  and  by  the  gates  the  lame  and  the  blind  sit 
asking  alms.^  In  the  synagogues  the  people  meet  and 
the  rabbis  read  and  expound  the  Scriptures.^  On  the  lake 
the  fishermen  ply  their  craft,  and  by  its  margin,  in  field  or 
on  the  rocks,  dry  their  nets.^  The  shepherd  on  the  hill- 
side or  plain  tends  his  sheep,  seeks  in  the  desert  or  on  the 
mountain  the  lost  lamb,  tenderly  bearing  it  home.^     The 

*  Jos.,  Bell.  Jud.^  iii.  3.  2.  3  Matt.  xi.  16.  ^  Luke  iv.  16. 

Matt.  XX.  3,  4.  4  Ibid.  xx.  30.  ^  Ibid.  v.  1-3. 

7  Luke  \v.  3-6. 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  ii 

careful  woman  searches  for  the  piece  she  has  lost;'  and 
the  woman  who  is  a  sinner  wakes  to  penitence  and  shame, 
and  the  love  that  is  born  of  holy  gratitude.*  Men  build 
barns  and  store  grain,  and  die  in  the  moment  of  proudest 
prosperity.  ^  The  diseased  seek  the  physician,  the  widow 
loses  her  only  son,  and  the  father,  fearing  he  may  be  left 
childless,  inquires  for  one  who  may  heal  his  daughter.^ 
The  rich  man  leaves  the  steward  to  manage  his  estate, 
and  he  abuses  the  brief  authority  in  which  he  is  dressed, 
beats  the  maid-servants,  and  is  the  more  a  tyrant  that  he 
is  a  tyrant's  slave.^  Men  are  so  deep  in  business  and 
pleasure,  with  lands,  or  oxen,  or  newly-wedded  wife  that 
they  cannot  mind  the  things  of  the  kingdom  of  God.*  In 
the  many  towns,  and  populous  villages,  and  thriving 
districts  of  Galilee  "  they  ate,  they  drank,  they  bought,  they 
sold,  they  planted,  they  builded,  they  married,  and  were 
given  in  marriage."  ^ 

The  people  that  so  lived  were  mainly,  but  not  entirely, 
of  Jewish  descent.  Their  land  was  too  open  and  busy  to 
be  exclusive — the  people  too  remote  from  Jerusalem,  and 
too  jealous  of  its  priesthood  to  be  dominated  by  the 
narrower  Judsean  ideal.  The  men  of  Jerusalem  used  to 
say,  "there  was  no  priest  among  the  Galileans;"  and 
the  Galileans  were  the  happier  in  life  and  freer  in  faith 
for  wanting  the  priest.  And  the  scribes  who  there  flou- 
rished were  more  varied  and  less  rigid  in  opinion  than 
those  of  Judaea,  and  so  the  stricter  southern  said  of  the 
looser  northern  province,  "The  men  there  do  not  learn 
the  law  from  one  master."  And  they  could  learn  of 
foreign  as  well  as  of  native  masters.  In  Galilee  there 
were  Gentile  cities  like  Scythopolis,  and  cities  like 
Tiberias,  where  Greeks  dwelt,  and  where  Greek  culture 
and  art  were  not  unknown.^     Through  it,  too,  there  was 

'  Luke  XV.  8,  9.  3  Ibid.  xii.  17,  18.  ^  ibid.  xii.  45. 

•  Ibid.  vii.  37,  38.         4  Ibid.  viii.  49-56.  *  Ibid.  xiv.  \^-^Q, 

7  Ibid.  xvii.  28.  ^  Jos.,  Vita,  12. 


12  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

continually  flowing  a  stream  of  commerce,  and  Syrians 
and  Arabians,  Phoenicians  and  Greeks  often  made  their 
homes  in  a  land  which  was  a  highway  of  the  nations. 
These  elements  and  influences  were  strong  enough  to 
modify  and  enrich,  but  not  to  change  the  native  faith.  In 
Galilee  there  was  less  aversion  to  Gentile  culture  than  in 
Judaea.  Aristobulus,  the  first  of  the  Jews  to  discover 
Moses  in  Plato,  and  the  law  of  Jahveh  in  the  philosophy 
of  Greece,  was  a  Galilean.  So  were  Alexander  Jannseus, 
the  Asmonsean  most  skilled  in  the  wisdom  of  the  Gen- 
tiles ;  and  Justus  of  Tiberias,  who,  though  a  Jew,  was 
possessed  of  the  best  Hellenic  culture.  There,  too,  coins 
with  Greek  inscriptions  circulated,  amphitheatres  and 
palaces  ornamented  in  the  Greek  and  Roman  styles  were 
tolerated,  and  even  the  Roman  eagles,  which  could 
not  be  introduced  into  Jerusalem  without  danger  of  in- 
surrection, were  allowed  to  pass  unchallenged  through 
Galilee.^  But  while  this  contact  with  a  wider  world 
made  the  men  of  Galilee  more  open  in  mind  and  heart 
than  the  men  of  Judaea,  it  did  not  make  them  less  devoted 
to  the  faith  and  hope  of  Israel.  Sacred  history  and  song 
had  consecrated  their  land.  The  victory  that  Barak  had 
achieved  and  Deborah  had  sung  was  won  by  Galileans  on 
Galilean  soil.*  A  later  poet,  who  rejoiced  to  see  God  arise 
to  scatter  His  enemies,  praised  the  heroic  feats  of  *'  the 
princes  of  Zebulon  and  the  princes  of  Naphtali."^ 
Cowardice  was  never  a  vice  of  the  Galileans  ;'*  and  in  the 
darkest  period  of  Judaism  names  like  those  of  Ezekias, 
Judas  Galilseus,  and  John  of  Giscala  justify  the  saying. 
To  the  religion  of  Israel  it  had  given  prophets  like 
Hosea  and  Nahum,  and  to  its  literature  poets  like  the 
singer  of  the  Song  of  Songs.  They  loved  the  city  and 
and  service  of  their  faith,  and  to  the  last  "  they  went  up 

"  Antt.y  xviii.  5.  3.  2  Judges  iv.-v.  3  Psa.  Ixviii.  27. 

4  Jos.,  Bell.  Jud.j  iii.  3.  2. 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  13 

to  Jerusalem,  as  was  the  custom  of  the  feast." '  But  the 
grand  religious  agency  in  Galilee  was  the  synagogue,  not 
the  temple ;  its  ideal  was  that  of  the  scribe  rather  than 
that  of  the  priest.  As  a  necessary  consequence,  they  were 
more  concerned  with  the  ethical  than  with  the  ritual  in 
Judaism,  with  the  interpretation  of  the  written  and  oral 
law  than  with  the  observance  of  the  instituted  and 
hierarchic  worship.  Their  Judaism  was  one  of  the  letter, 
but  even  as  such  it  was  nobler  and  purer  than  the  Judaism 
of  the  temple  and  the  priesthood. 

Judaea  was  in  its  physical  aspect  a  less  favoured  land 
than  Galilee.  It,  too,  had  its  fair  and  fertile  districts,  like 
the  plain  of  Shephela,  so  rich  in  glorious  historical 
memories ;  and  the  country  around  Bethlehem,  so  sugges- 
tive of  heroic  names  and  inextinguishable  Messianic  hopes, 
and  the  graves  where  grew  '*  the  palm  trees  by  the  water, 
the  rose  plants  which  are  in  Jericho.*  But  if  it  could  not 
as  regards  its  physical  features  rival  the  grandeur  of  upper 
or  the  lovely  luxuriance  of  lower  Galilee,  in  what  per- 
tained to  historical  and  political  interest  it  stood  pre- 
eminent. The  people  were  of  purest  Jewish  blood.  The 
men  of  Judah  and  Benjamin  who  had  returned  from  the 
captivity,  settled  in  Judaea,  and  there  proceeded  to  realize 
their  hierocratic  state.  They  built  their  temple  and  their 
holy  city,  and  fenced  themselves  round  with  laws  and 
customs  which  should  at  once  prevent  imitation  of  the 
heathen,  and  maintain  in  purity  the  worship  of  Jahveh. 
Their  success  was  in  many  respects  wonderful,  perhaps 
more  wonderful  than  any  achievement  on  record  in  the 
domain  of  national  polity  and  life.  Their  ideal  was  to  be 
a  people  apart,  the  elect  of  Jahveh,  the  only  people  that 
knew  Him,  the  only  people  He  knew.  In  order  to  realize 
this  ideal,  their  polity  was  so  framed  as  to  blend  and 
identify  the  religious  and  civil,  the  worship  of  God  with 
*  Luke  ii.  42.  *  Ecclus.  xxiv.  14. 


14  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  being  and  conduct  of  the  state.  The  one  God  had  His 
one  temple ;  the  capital  was  the  holy  city,  the  seat  of  civil 
authority,  the  scene  of  national  worship.  The  act  of 
collective  reverence  was  an  act  of  loyal  obeisance  ;  the 
service  performed  in  the  temple  was  rendered  to  the  great 
King.  The  action  of  this  ideal  on  the  land  and  state  was 
to  penetrate  both  with  a  deep  religious  meaning — to  asso- 
ciate both  with  the  will  of  God  and  tl:e  ultimate  destinies 
of  His  people.  The  city  and  temple  made  Israel  a  unity 
in  his  very  dispersion.  Though  Jews  might  be  counted 
by  millions  in  Alexandria  or  Rome,  yet  the  home  of  their 
spirits  was  Jerusalem  ;  to  it  their  hearts  turned  as  not 
only  the  city  of  their  fathers,  but  as  the  one  place  where 
the  God  whose  chosen  they  were  could  be  worshipped  by 
His  collective  and  united  people.  And  this  belief  was 
expressed,  maintained,  and  strengthened  by  loved  insti- 
tutions. There  were  great  festivals  that  drew  the  scattered 
tribes  to  the  city  of  their  faith,  the  home  of  their  hopes  ; 
and  they  came  there,  as  many  often  as  three  millions  of 
men'  —  '*  Parthians,  and  Medes,  and  Elamites,  and  the 
dwellers  in  Mesopotamia,  and  in  Judaea,  and  Cappadocia, 
in  Pontus,  and  Asia,  Phrygia,  and  Pamphylia,  in  Egypt, 
and  in  the  parts  of  Libya  about  Cyrene,  and  the  Romans 
sojourning  in  Jerusalem,  Jews  and  proselytes,  Cretes  and 
Arabians."  ^ 

And  the  city  that  was  the  scene  of  so  immense  assemblies 
had  necessarily  a  peculiar  character  of  its  own.  It  existed 
for  them,  it  lived  by  them.  There  were  priests  needed  for 
the  conduct  of  the  worship,  twenty-four  courses  of  them 
and  20,000  men.^  There  were  Levites,  their  servants,  in 
immense  numbers,  needed  to  watch,  maintain,  clean  the 
temple — to  do  the  menial  and  ministering  work  necessary 
to  its  elaborate  service  and  stupendous  acts  of  worship, 

»  Jos.,  Bell.  Jud.^  vi.  9.  3.  2  Acts  ii.  9-1 1. 

3  Jos.,  Vita,  i. ;  Contra  Apion.^  ii.  8. 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS,  15 

There  were  scribes  needed  for  the  interpretation  of  the 
law,  men  skilled  in  the  Scriptures  and  tradition,  with 
names  like  Gamaliel,  so  famed  for  wisdom  as  to  draw 
young  men  like  Saul  from  distant  Tarsus,  or  Apollos  from 
rich  Alexandria.  There  were  synagogues,  480,  of  them  at 
least,  where  the  rabbis  read  and  the  people  heard  the 
word  which  God  had  in  past  times  spoken  unto  the  fathers 
by  the  prophets.  The  city  was  indeed  in  a  sense  the 
religion  of  Israel,  incorporated  and  localized,  and  the  man 
who  loved  the  one  turned  daily  his  face  toward  the  other, 
saying,  "  My  soul  longeth,  yea,  even  fainteth,  for  the  courts 
of  Jahveh."  "  I  was  glad  when  they  said  unto  me.  Let 
us  go  into  the  house  of  Jahveh.  Our  feet  shall  stand 
within  thy  gates,  O  Jerusalem."  * 

But  the  land  and  city  had  meanings  no  political  or 
sacerdotal  institutions  could  express.  It  had  been  the 
arena  of  a  great  history,  which  was  less  the  history  of  a 
nation  than  a  religion.  Jahveh  had  given  the  land  to  the 
people ;  within  it  His  kingdom  was  to  come,  His  society 
and  state  to  be  realized.  On  its  plains,  even  where  most 
arid,  Abraham  had  lived,  and  had  sanctified  them  by  his 
presence  and  his  intercourse  with  God.  Into  it  the  people 
Moses  had  led  out  of  Egypt  had  passed  with  Joshua,  and 
there  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon  was  the  place  where  he  com- 
manded the  sun  to  stand  still,  that  he  might  the  more 
utterly  smite  the  Amorite.  On  these  fields  the  people  of 
God  had  done  battle  with  the  Philistines,  Samson  had 
descended  from  the  hill  country  to  woo  their  daughters,  to 
suffer  his  terrible  punishment,  and  work  his  splendid 
revenge,  and  the  ruddy-faced  David  in  his  humble  yet 
glorious  3^outh  had  met  and  vanquished  the  proud  Goliath. 
On  the  hills  above,  the  Maccabees  had  defied  the  tyrant, 
raised  the  standard  of  freedom  and  faith,  and  saved  Israel. 
Northward  is  Bethlehem,  the  birthplace   of  David,  sur- 

*  Pss.  Ixxxiv.  2 ;  cxxii.  I,  3. 


i6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

rounded  by  the  hills  on  which  he  had  watched  his  flocks ; 
while  beyond  is  Jerusalem,  the  city  where  he  reigned  and 
Solomon  judged.  On  all  there  lies  a  light  that  fades  not, 
but  grows  richer  and  more  radiant  with  the  ages.  Zion 
has  heard  the  sublimest  of  the  prophets  say  unto  her, 
**  Thy  God  reigneth."  The  mountains  of  Judah  have  been 
touched  by  the  beautiful  feet  of  Him  who  brought  good 
tidings  and  published  peace.  The  ways  that  converge 
upon  the  city  have  been  consecrated  by  pilgrims'  songs, 
that  are  songs  of  cheer  and  hope  for  pilgrims  of  all  lands 
and  times.  The  city  is  embalmed  in  the  most  glori^ous 
sacred  poetry  of  the  world,  so  humanly  universal,  so 
divinely  immortal,  that  once  man  has  learned  to  use 
it  he  can  never  cease  to  sing.  And  the  land  trans- 
figured by  these  meanings  and  memories  is  mightier  in 
spiritual  than  physical  influences ;  the  hands  by  which  it 
shapes  men  are  moral  and  religious  rather  than  material 
and  fateful.  Its  plastic  energies  are  born  not  of  nature 
but  of  spirit,  and  are  to  the  susceptible  soul  as  the  in- 
spiration of  God,  but  to  the  insusceptible  soul  they  are 
not,  or  are  hardened  into  institutions  and  traditions  that 
can  neither  maintain  nor  communicate  life. 

Jesus  thus  lived  in  a  land  full  of  many  influences,  his- 
torical and  physical,  small  in  size,  but  mighty  in  power. 
Greece  is  great  for  ever  as  the  home  of  the  Hellenes,  the 
men  so  gifted  with  **  the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine  "  as 
to  discover  and  reveal  to  the  world  the  beautiful  in  nature 
and  man.  The  city  that  rose  beside  the  Tiber,  and  swayed 
for  centuries  the  sceptre  of  the  world,  has  made  the  hills 
on  which  she  sat  throned  famous  for  evermore.  The 
queenly  Nile  and  the  rivers  of  Mesopotamia  have  been 
immortalized  by  the  ancient  empires  of  Egypt,  Assyria, 
and  Babylon.  But  to  only  one  land  was  it  given  to  bear 
and  nurse  two  peoples,  most  dissimilar  while  akin,  small 
in  numbers  but  most  potent  in  influence — the  Phoenicians, 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  17 

who  made  for  us  the  art  of  commerce  and  found  for  us  the 
pathway  of  the  sea,  and  the  Hebrews,  the  people  of  the 
Book,  "  to  whom  pertaineth  the  adoption,  and  the  she- 
chinah,  and  the  covenants,  and  the  giving  of  the  law,  and 
the  service  of  God,  and  the  promises  ;  whose  are  the 
fathers,  and  of  whom  as  concerning  the  flesh  Christ  came, 
who  is  over  all,  God  blessed  for  ever.     Amen."  * 

The  land,  then,  was  an  appropriate  home  for  Jesus.  With 
its  idea?  significance,  the  purposes  to  which  it  had  been,  as 
it  were,  dedicated  of  God,  He  stood  in  essential  sympathy. 
In  and  through  Him,  indeed,  the  ideal  was  destined  to  be 
realized.  And  as  in  Him  its  history  culminated,  He  could  not 
have  been  apart  from  it.  Nowhere  else  could  He  have  found 
the  conditions  necessary  to  His  becoming  what  He  became, 
doing  what  He  did,  fulfilling  the  mission  He  fulfilled.  In 
Galilee  He  found  the  political  and  social  conditions  that 
allowed  Him  to  reach  His  end,  to  realize  His  ideal ;  in 
Judsea  He  found  the  historical  conditions  which  made  His 
ideal  possible,  intelligible,  real.  But  in  both  cases  it  was 
simply  conditions  He  found ;  in  neither  did  there  exist  the 
creative  causes  that  found  and  made  Him.  Judaism  was 
a  condition,  but  not  the  cause,  of  Christ's  being;  and 
while  the  condition  may  be  necessary  to  the  operation  of 
the  cause,  it  is  insufficient  to  the  production  of  the  effect. 
Without  Judaism,  Jesus  had  been  without  an  arena  on 
which  to  live  and  develop  and  act;  but  without  Jesus, 
Judaism  had  been  without  the  Christ  that  created  Chris- 
tianity. Galilee  was,  by  the  very  circumstances  which 
qualified  it  to  be  a  condition  of  his  growth  or  becoming, 
disqualified  to  be  a  cause  ;  Judaea,  by  the  very  conditions 
which  qualified  it  to  be  an  arena  for  the  evolution  of  the 
ideal  He  was  to  realize,  was  disqualified  for  effecting  its 
realization.  And  the  evidence  lies  in  their  respective  char- 
acters and  histories,  and  in  their  respective  relations  to 
*  Romans  ix.  4,  5. 


1 8  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

Him.  Galilee  never  struggled  towards  the  production  of 
a  being  like  Christ,  and  so  has  no  one  that  can  be  compared 
with  Him.  He  stands  alone  in  its  history.  Though  it 
furnished  Him  with  a  soil  on  which  to  grow,  yet  so  soon 
as  He  had  grown  into  the  Christ  He  was  to  be,  it  knew 
Him  not,  wondered  at  and  followed  Him  for  a  few  days, 
then  despised  and  forsook  Him.  Judaea,  though  it  longed 
for  a  Messiah,  never  dreamed  of  a  religion  without  a 
temple  and  with  only  a  single  and  invisible  Priest.  Out 
of  the  institutions  it  favoured  and  maintained  no  one  who 
so  held  and  taught  could  ever  have  issued.  When,  with- 
out a  priesthood  and  opposed  to  the  priestly  spirit,  its 
Messiah  came,  Judaia  had  nothing  more  or  better  for  Him 
than  the  cross.  The  land  supplied  the  conditions  neces- 
sary to  the  forms  of  His  being,  character,  and  action  ;  but 
in  Himself  alone  lived  the  cause  of  what  He  was  and 
became  and  did,  of  all  He  said  and  has  achieved. 

2.  The  People.  Descent  is  a  potent  factor  of  char- 
acter. The  past  can  never  disinherit  the  present ;  the 
present  can  never  dispossess  itself  of  qualities  transmitted 
from  the  past.  The  great  man  cannot  be  understood 
apart  from  his  people — must  be  approached  through  his 
country  and  kin.  Jesus  was  a  Jew,  a  son  of  Israel. 
Israel  had  not  been  a  royal  or  imperial  people,  had  no 
claim  to  stand  among  the  empires  of  the  world.  Once, 
for  a  brief  season,  they  had  become  a  great  power.  Their 
history  boasted  but  two  splendid  reigns,  one  famed  for 
conquest,  the  other  for  wisdom  ;  yet  in  each  case  the 
splendour  was  dashed  with  darkness.  The  great  kings 
died,  and  the  great  kingdom  perished,  fell  into  two  miser- 
able monarchies,  always  rivals,  often  at  war,  threatened 
or  held  in  fee  by  the  great  empires  on  either  side.  And 
the  people  were  as  destitute  of  literary  genius  as  of  poli- 
tical importance.  They  were  not  gifted  with  the  faculty 
of  making  a  language  beautiful  and  musical  for  ever,  of 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS,  19 

creating  a  literature  that  could  command  the  world  by  its 
rich  and  exact  science,  sublime  and  profound  philosophy, 
pure  and  exalted  poetry.  They  were,  too,  not  only  with- 
out the  genius  for  art,  but  possessed  the  spirit  to  which 
art  is  alien,  an  unholy  and  hateful  thing.  They  had  had 
as  a  people  nothing  cosmopolitan  in  their  past,  had  never, 
like  the  Phoenicians,  penetrated  the  world  with  their  in- 
ventions and  commerce,  like  the  Greeks,  with  their  litera- 
ture, like  the  Assyrians  or  Romans,  with  their  arms ;  but 
they  had  lived  a  life  that  grew  narrower  and  more  exclusive 
every  day,  and  had  become  among  the  nations  not  so 
much  a  nation  as  a  sect. 

Yet  this  people  had  had  a  glorious  and  singular  past. 
If  ever  a  people  had  been  created  and  destined  for  a  great 
work  in  the  sphere  of  religion,  it  was  the  people  of  Israel. 
They  accomplished  in  obscurity  and  amid  contempt  and 
against  difficulties  that  seemed  inconquerable,  a  work  that 
is  in  its  own  order  the  foremost  work  ever  done  in  the 
world.  They  created  not  simply  a  new  religion — that  was 
in  primitive  time's  an  almost  daily  feat — but  an  idea  and 
embodiment  of  religion  so  absolutely  new,  yet  of  such 
transcendent  truth  and  potence  as  to  have  made  religion 
a  new  force  for  man,  sweeter,  truer,  and  more  ethical  than 
it  had  ever  been  conceived  to  be.  It  is  not  possible  to  tell 
here  and  now  how  they  did  it.  Enough  to  say,  they  had 
been  creators  of  a  new  and  peculiar  conception  of  God  and 
man,  of  society  and  the  state.  Two  thousand  years  before 
our  date  they  had  fled  as  a  band  of  slaves  from  Egypt  and 
found  freedom  in  the  desert.  There  their  leader  had  given 
them  laws  which  were  his,  yet  God's.  They  were  organ- 
ized into  a  nation,  with  God  as  their  King,  and  settled  in 
Canaan  to  realize  a  Divine  kingdom,  an  ideal  state,  insti- 
tuted and  ruled  of  God.  In  it  everything  was  sacred, 
nothing  profane.  The  common  duties  of  life  were  subjects 
of  Divine   commandment.     The  nation   in  its  collective 


20  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

being  was  meant  to  be  the  vehicle  and  minister  of  the 
Divine  Will.  Worship  was,  while  individual,  national, 
the  homage  of  the  people  to  their  invisible  King.  While 
the  nation  by  its  worship  and  through  its  priests  spoke  to 
God,  God  by  His  prophets  spoke  to  the  nation.  They 
were,  indeed,  the  voices  of  God,  speakers  for  Him,  reveal- 
ing His  truths,  enforcing  His  will.  But  a  recognized  is 
not  always  an  obeyed  authority.  The  notion  of  religion 
was  sublimer  than  the  people  had  mind  to  appreciate  or 
will  to  incorporate  and  adequately  actualize.  Worship  is 
easier  than  obedience.  Men  are  ever  readier  to  serve  the 
priest  than  to  obey  the  prophet,  and  sacerdotalism  flour- 
ished in  Israel  while  prophecy  decayed  and  died.  And  so, 
while  the  prophets  created  a  literature  embodying  an  un- 
realized religion,  the  priests  created  a  nation,  a  people 
devoted  to  the  worship  they  administered,  the  symbols 
and  ceremonies  they  had  instituted. 

There  were  thus  two  ideals  in  Israel,  each  the  ex- 
press antithesis  of  the  other.  The  one  was  prophetic, 
the  other  priestly.  The  prophetic  was  an  exalted  ethical 
faith,  possessed  of  an  intense  and  lofty  consciousness  of 
the  absolute  holiness  of  God,  and  of  the  need  of  holiness 
in  man,  or  the  perfect  conformity  of  the  human  to  the 
Divine  will,  to  the  obedience  He  required  and  approved. 
The  priestly  was  an  elaborate,  sensuous,  and  sacer- 
dotal system,  which  aspired  to  regulate  the  relations  be- 
tween God  and  man  by  sacrifices  and  symbols  and 
ceremonial  observances.  The  prophetic  we  name  He- 
braism, the  priestly  Judaism.  The  grand  aim  of  the 
first  was  to  create  alike  in  the  man  and  the  people  moral 
obedience,  and  so  it  was  ever  preaching  *'  the  righteous 
God  loveth  righteousness;"  **Heis  of  purer  eyes  than 
to  behold  iniquity;"  "  Justice  and  judgment  are  the  habi- 
tation of  His  throne ; "  He  cannot  allow  the  ill-doer 
to  go  unpunished  or  the  well-doer  to  live  unrewarded. 
The  grand  aim  of  the  second  was  to  create  a  people  devoted 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS,  21 

to  sacerdotal  customs,  a  state  so  constituted  and  conducted 
that  men  should  regard  the  laws  of  the  priest  as  the  laws 
of  God,  and  performance  of  his  rites  as  supreme  conformity 
to  the  Divine  will.  There  were  times  when  the  prophetic 
faith  penetrated  with  its  spirit  and  transfigured  with  its 
meaning  the  priestly  system — and  in  this,  their  real  Mosaic 
relation,  they  completed  and  complemented  each  other ; 
but  in  the  actual  field  of  history  and  life  their  usual  rela- 
tion was  one  of  antagonism  and  conflict.  The  prophetic 
was  by  its  very  nature  qualified  to  be  in  all  its  splendid 
elements  permanent  and  universal,  but  the  priestly  was 
designed  and  qualified  to  be  at  best  typical  and  provisional. 
But  the  temporal,  in  its  struggle  to  become  eternally  and 
universally  valid,  would  not  allow  the  eternal  to  be  real- 
ized. The  priests  so  tenaciously  laboured  to  make  their 
shadows  the  substance  that  the  substance  was  hidden  by 
the  shadows,  and  it  was  against  this  sustained  endeavour 
of  theirs  that  the  prophets  so  strenuously  contended.  But 
the  weakness  of  man  helped  the  priests.  Hebraism  re- 
mained an  ideal,  a  faith  too  sublimely  spiritual  and  ethical 
for  gross  and  sensuous  men ;  but  Judaism  became  a  reality, 
as  was  easily  possible  to  a  religion  that  translated  the  grand 
and  severe  idea  of  righteousness  into  the  poor  and  simple 
notion  of  legal  cleanness,  and  substituted  the  fanaticism  of 
the  symbol  for  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity. 

Two  things  need  to  be  here  noted.  (i)  The  contra- 
diction in  the  history  of  Israel  between  the  political  ideal, 
which  was  in  its  highest  qualities  prophetic,  and  the 
reality.  The  ideal  was  the  Theocracy.  The  state  was 
the  Church,  God  was  the  king,  the  polity  was  the  religion. 
Our  modern  distinctions  were  unknown ;  God  penetrated 
everywhere  and  everything,  and  consecrated  whatever  He 
penetrated.  The  individual  and  the  state  were  in  all  their 
modes  of  being  and  action  meant  to  be  religious.  But  to 
the  realization  of  such  an  ideal,  absolute   freedom   was 


2  2  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

necessary;  a  tyranny,  either  native  or  foreign,  could  only 
be  fatal  to  it.  If  the  state  was  not  allowed  to  develop 
according  to  its  own  nature,  its  institutions  spontaneously 
crystallizing  round  its  central  belief,  it  could  not  fulfil  the 
end  given  in  its  very  idea.  And  Israel  had  but  seldom 
enjoyed  the  freedom  his  ideal  demanded.  He  had 
often  been  the  vassal,  had  even  been  the  captive,  of  great 
empires.  His  struggle  for  political  existence  acted  injuri- 
ously on  his  religious  ideal — made  him  feel  that  to  maintain 
national  being  was  to  fulfil  his  religious  mission.  And  the 
patriotism  evoked  by  the  first  narrowed  to  a  miserable 
particularism  the  generous  universalism  that  lived  in  the 
second.  Israel  believed  that  the  states  which  were  the 
enemies  of  his  political  being  were  the  enemies  of  his 
religious  mission,  and  so  he  hated  his  conquerors  with  the 
double  hatred  of  the  vanquished  patriot  and  the  disap- 
pointed zealot.  If  the  alien  refused  to  spare  his  freedom, 
he  could  refuse  to  distribute  his  light.  The  circumstances 
that  did  not  allow  him  to  realize  his  political  ideal  pre- 
vented him  from  fulfilling  his  religious  mission. 

(2)  The  contradiction  in  the  life  of  Israel  between  the 
religious  ideal  and  the  reality.  The  two  elements  in  the 
faith  of  Israel  were,  as  above  indicated,  the  sacerdotal  and 
the  spiritual,  or  the  priestly  and  the  prophetic.  The  one 
was  embodied  in  the  legal  ordinances  and  worship,  the  other 
expressed  in  the  prophetic  Scriptures.  The  prophets  re- 
present the  religion  of  Jahveh,  not  as  realized  in  Israel, 
but  in  its  ideal  truth  and  purity.  The  priests  represent  it, 
not  as  it  ought  to  have  been,  but  as  it  actually  was.  It 
was  possible  to  be  most  faithful  to  the  sacerdotal,  while 
most  false  to  the  spiritual  element.  Where  the  priest  was 
most  blindly  followed  the  prophet  was  most  obstinately 
disobeyed.  Prophecy,  neglected,  died,  but  the  priesthood, 
respected  and  revered,  grew.  While  all  that  remained  ot 
the  prophets  was  a  dead  literature,  the  priests  lived  and 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS,  23 

multiplied,  the  soul  of  an  active  and  comprehensive 
system.  It  has  often  been  said  that  the  Jews  went  into 
captivity  polytheists  and  returned  monotheists;  that, 
before  it,  nothing  could  keep  them  back  from  idolatry, 
after  it,  nothing  tempt  them  to  it.  But  it  entirely  depends 
on  the  meaning  of  the  terms  whether  the  above  statement 
be  true.  The  Jews  were  as  little  monotheists,  in  the 
sense  of  the  prophets,  after  as  before  the  captivity.  There 
is  an  idolatry  of  the  symbol  as  well  as  of  the  image.  The 
idol  is  a  representation  of  God,  the  symbol  a  representation 
of  the  truth;  and  where  the  representation  becomes  to  the 
man  as  the  thing  represented,  there  is  idolatry — reverence 
of  the  sign  instead  of  the  thing  signified.  And  the  Jews 
were  idolaters  of  the  symbol.  Their  sacerdotalism  was 
deified.  Means  were  made  ends,  legal  more  than  ethical 
purity,  mint,  anise,  and  cummin,  more  than  righteousness, 
mercy,  and  truth.  Priestcraft  and  legalism  proved  as  fatal 
to  the  realization  of  the  religious  ideal  as  bondage  to  the 
realization  of  the  political. 

And  these  contradictions  between  the  ideal  and  the  real 
had  reached  their  sharpest  point  when  Christ  came.  Free- 
dom, the  necessary  condition  of  greatness,  whether  of  deed 
or  endeavour,  was  unknown.  The  land  was  ruled  by  hated 
aliens.  In  things  outer  and  social,  indeed,  the  people 
seemed  prosperous.  New  and  splendid  cities  like  Csesarea 
were  rising,  aping  the  magnificence  in  architecture  and 
vice,  in  law  and  license,  of  the  famous  and  dreaded  Capital 
in  the  West.  In  old  cities  like  Jerusalem  buildings  were 
in  process  that  eclipsed  the  greatest  structures  of  ancient 
times,  a  temple  splendid  as  Solomon's,  monument  of  a 
man  who  mocked  the  faith  it  was  meant  to  honour. 
While  the  people  used  the  temple,  they  hated  and  fearpd 
its  builder.  For  Herod  was  a  double  offence — a  son  of 
Edom,  a  hated  child  of  hated  Esau ;  and  a  vassal  king, 
monarch  of  Judssa,  but  subject  of  Rome,  one  whose  rule 


2i  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

made  the  ruled  slaves  of  a  slave.  On  the  religious  side 
the  people  had  been  for  centuries  afflicted  with  barrenness. 
The  Divine  oracles  were  dumb,  and  in  their  place  there 
had  risen  a  forced  and  fantastic  literature,  visionary,  turgid, 
that  was  to  the  prophetic  what  the  spent  echo,  broken  into 
confused  and  inarticulate  sound,  is  to  the  human  voice, 
full  of  soft  music  and  sweet  reason.  The  people  were  in  the 
seat  of  their  strength  smitten  with  weakness,  and  at  their 
heart  the  grim  and  terrible  forces  of  dissolution  were  at 
work. 

But  the  state  of  the  people  will  become  more  evident  if 
we  analyze  and  describe  the  two  great  parties  of  Christ's 
day,  the  Pharisees  and  Sadducees.  Ascetic  and  commu- 
nist societies  like  the  Essenes  stood  too  remote  from  the 
national  life  and  influenced  it  too  little  to  be  here  of  much 
significance.  Our  knowledge  of  the  two  great  historical 
and  politico-religious  parties  is  still  most  imperfect,  though 
clearer  than  it  once  was.  The  parallel  suggested  by 
Josephus  between  the  Pharisees  and  the  Stoics,  and  the 
Sadducees  and  the  Epicureans,  was  as  incorrect  as  unjust.^ 
The  popular  notion,  identifying  the  Pharisee  with  the 
formalist  and  the  Sadducee  with  the  sceptic,  is  no  better. 
The  two  parties  were  at  once  political  and  religious,  repre- 
sented different  ideas  of  the  national  polity,  and  different 
interpretations  of  the  national  faith.  The  Pharisees  were 
a  popular  and  democratic,  but  the  Sadducees  a  conservative 
and  aristocratic,  party.     The  former  represented  a  freer 

*  Josephus  was  indeed  too  careful  to  draw  the  parallel  explicitly 
himself.  He  compares  the  Pharisees  to  the  Stoics  and  the  Essenes  to 
the  Pythagoreans  [Vita^  i  ;  Antt.,  xv.  lo.  4)  ;  but  while  his  exposition  of 
Sadducean  doctrine  {AntL,  xiii.  5.  9)  suggests  the  Epicurean,  he  too 
well  understood  the  thoroughly  Jewish  character  of  the  party  to  com- 
pare it  with  any  Greek  school.  Even  as  it  is,  his  use  of  Greek  terms  is 
essentially  misleading.  There  was  no  idea  affirmed  by  the  Pharisees 
and  Essenes  and  denied  by  the  Sadducees  that  could  be  fitly  translated 

by  Ei/iajO/ifivq. 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  25 

and  more  individual  movement,  but  the  latter  a  hereditary 
and  sacerdotal  tendency.  The  Pharisees  constituted  a 
school  or  society,  where  the  condition  of  membership  was 
intellectual ;  but  the  Sadducees  constituted  a  party,  where 
the  condition  of  membership  was  descent.  The  former 
was  an  association  of  the  likeminded,  but  the  latter  a 
cluster  of  priestly  and  governing  families.  Each  had  a 
different  interpretation  of  the  past,  present,  and  future  of 
Israel ;  and  their  conduct  differed  with  their  interpretation. 
When  the  creative  period  in  Israel  ceased,  the  interpretive 
began.  When  the  school  of  the  prophets  died,  the  school 
of  the  scribes  was  founded,  and  in  the  latter  Pharisaism 
was  born.  The  Pharisees  were  essentially  interpreters ; 
what  had  been  written  and  delivered  as  law  they  lived  to 
explain  and  obey,'  Their  ideal  was  to  see  every  Israelite 
skilled  in  the  law,  and  obedient  to  it,  in  order  that  man, 
by  being  faithful  to  the  human  conditions  of  the  covenant, 
might  enable  God  to  fulfil  His  promise  and  restore  the 
kingdom  to  Israel.  Their  notion  of  the  law  was  broader 
than  the  Sadducean;  comprehended  not  simply  the  priestly 
ordinances,  but  every  statute  or  precept  by  lawgiver, 
prophet,  or  rabbi  which  related  to  the  regulation  of  the 
individual  or  social  life.  Their  notion,  too,  of  reward  or 
recompense  was  much  more  pronounced  and  powerful, 
bound  all  the  promises  of  the  Old  Testament  both  to  this 
life  and  one  that  was  to  come.  The  necessary  counterpart 
of  an  obedient  people  was  a  faithful  God ;  when  the  people 
did  as  God  commanded,  God  would  do  as  He  had  promised. 
So  the  Pharisaic  zeal  for  the  law  but  expressed  the  Phari- 
saic zeal  for  the  future  and  triumph  of  Israel ;  and  it  at 
once  rested  on  and  addressed  the  deepest  of  Jewish  hopes 
— the  hope  in  the  Messiah.  Thus  over  against  the  Saddu- 
cean policy  and  position  they  placed  the  ancient  national 
ideal,  which  was  to  be  realized  by  obedience  to  the  law  the 
*  Jos.,/>V//.  Jud.,  ii.  8.  14  ;  ^;^//.,  xvii.  2.  4. 
3 


26  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

fathers  had  received  and  they  interpreted.  With  the  idea 
of  interpretation  came  the  idea  of  authority.  The  men 
that  had  been  despised  while  living  were  revered  when 
dead  ;  and  the  interpretation  became  as  authoritative  and 
sacred  as  the  interpreted,  the  oral  as  the  written  law. 
The  former  at  once  explained,  modified,  and  enlarged  the 
latter.  The  school  became  a  sort  of  permanent  lawgiver, 
augmenting  the  original  germ  by  aggregation  as  opposed 
to  growth  or  development.  This  process  the  Pharisees 
represented,  but  the  Sadducees  resisted.  They  stood  by 
the  old  sacerdotalism,  by  the  hereditary  principle  that 
secured  sacerdotal  functions  and  political  authority  to  the 
old  families.  The  prophecy  their  fathers  had  hated,  they 
ignored.  The  later  doctrines  of  angels  and  spirits,  of 
resurrection  and  immortality,  they  denied.  The  oral  law, 
the  interpretations  of  the  schools,  they  despised.  And  so 
they  and  the  Pharisees  stood  in  practical  as  in  theoretical 
politics  in  antithetical  relations.  The  Pharisee  represented 
the  patriotic  view,  developed  Judaism,  the  theocratic  belief 
in  all  its  scholastic  exaggeration  and  rigidity.  But  the 
Sadducees  represented  the  standpoint  of  the  politician,  the 
creed  of  the  ruling  families,  that  know  how  calmly  to  accept 
the  inevitable  while  preserving  their  prerogatives  and  privi- 
leges. Neither  party  was  true  to  Hebraism,  the  universal- 
ism  that  lived  in  the  prophets.  Both  were  illustrations  of 
how  historical  parties  may  be  most  false  to  history,  to 
every  great  principle  it  expresses  or  contains.  Judaism, 
as  it  then  lived,  was  the  antithesis  and  contradiction  of 
Hebraism ;  the  religion  alike  of  Pharisees  and  Sadducee"s 
was  the  negation  of  the  religion  Psalmists  had  sung  and 
Prophets  preached. 

Now,  amid  these  and  similar  historical  conditions  Jesus 
lived.  Could  they  make  Him  ?  Can  they  explain  Him  ? 
There  was  a  fine  fitness  in  His  being  a  Jew,  a  Son  of 
Abraham  the  Hebrew.     The  supreme  religious  person  of 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS,  ay 

the  race  fitly  came  from  its  most  religious  family.  He 
was  the  personalization  of  its  genius,  the  heir  of  its  work. 
It  had  created  the  history  that  made  Him  pgssible,  the 
men  to  whom  He  was  intelligible  and  through  whom  He 
could  be  revealed  to  the  world.  But  He  transcended  its 
powers  of  production,  was  more  and  greater  than  what  its 
native  energies  could  create.  The  splendid  religious  genius 
of  Israel  had  issued  in  Judaism,  and  which  of  its  two 
great  parties  could  produce  a  Christ  ?  The  Sadducees 
would  not  own  Him.  He  belonged  to  no  ruling  family, 
had  no  priestly  blood  in  His  veins,  was  one  whose  very 
meddling  with  religion  deserved  nothing  less  than  death. 
And  Pharisaism  was  as  incapable  of  forming  Him.  It 
was  nobler  than  its  rival,  had  loftier  aims,  truer  ambitions, 
a  sincerer  spirit.  But  it  was  fundamentally  increative, 
radically  infertile.  It  could  not  be  inventive,  inward, 
spiritual,  without  being  suicidal.  The  moment  it  had 
tried  to  transcend  legalism  and  particularism,  it  had 
perished.  All  its  wisdom  is  the  wisdom  of  the  interpreter, 
all  its  goodness  the  goodness  of  the  School.  But  Jesus  is 
throughout  the  very  antithesis  and  contradiction  of  Phari- 
saism. He  is  the  supreme  religious  spirit  of  history,  the 
foremost  creator  of  faith,  the  least  bound  by  legalism, 
the  most  absolutely  universal,  rich  in  the  most  human 
wisdom,  gracious  with  the  most  Divine  goodness.  It  is  a 
small  thing  to  find  among  the  sayings  of  Hillel  or  Shammai 
one  curiously  like  a  saying  of  Jesus.  The  great  thing  is 
the  spirit  of  the  men  and  the  system.  Common  sayings 
can  be  claimed  for  neither  Hillel  nor  Jesus,  but  what  each 
can  claim  is  his  distinctive  character  and  spirit.  Hillel  is 
a  Jewish  Rabbi,  and  could  never  have  been  a  Universal 
Teacher;  Jesus  is  a  Universal  Teacher,  and  could  never 
have  remained  a  mere  Jewish  Eabbi.  But  He  could  be 
the  first  only  as  He  transcended  the  second,  and  his 
historical   conditions,    while  equal  to   the  making   of  a 


28  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

Rabbi,  were  not  equal   to  the  creation  of  a   Universal 
Teacher. 

There  is  nothing  so  easy  as  to  change  conditions  into 
causes,  to  mistake  the  enumeration  of  formal  elements 
for  the  discovery  of  the  plastic  mind.  What  is  dead  and 
amorphous  in  Judaism  w^as  made  living  and  organic  by  the 
touch  of  Christ.  Judaism  cannot  shov^  how^  His  hand 
became  creative,  though  the  fact  is  indubitable  that  His 
hand  did  create.  The  maker  of  a  great  religion  is  no 
simple  product  v^hich  an  exhausted  faith  suddenly  and 
almost  insensibly  touched  by  other  exhausted  faiths  may 
easily  produce.  The  most  hurried  glance  can  see  how 
complex  and  difficult  the  problem  is. 

Contrast  Christ's  day  with  ours.  We  are  free,  the 
children  of  a  land  where  a  man  can  speak  the  thing  he 
will ;  but  He  was  without  freedom,  the  Son  of  a  people 
enslaved  and  oppressed.  We  are  educated,  enlightened 
by  the  best  thought  of  the  past,  the  surest  knowledge  of 
the  present ;  but  His  were  an  uneducated  people,  hardly 
knew  the  schoolmaster,  and  where  they  did,  received  from 
him  instruction  that  stunted  rather  than  developed.  We 
live  in  a  present  that  knows  the  past  and  is  enriched  with 
all  its  mental  wealth — the  treasures  of  India,  from  its 
earliest  Vedic  to  its  latest  Puranic  age — of  China,  of  Egypt, 
of  Persia,  of  Assyria ;  the  classic  riches  of  Greece  and 
Rome  ;  the  wondrous  stores  accumulated  by  the  Hebrews 
themselves  and  deposited  in  their  Scriptures — all  are  ours, 
at  our  feet,  in  our  heads,  there  to  make  the  new  wealth  old 
wealth  never  fails  to  create.  But  Jesus  lived  in  a  present 
closed  to  every  past,  save  the  past  of  His  own  people. 
The  common  home-born  Jew  knew  the  Gentile  but  to 
despise  him ;  the  wisdom  of  Greece  and  Rome  was 
to  him  but  foolishness,  best  unknown;  while  the  light 
that  streamed  from  his  own  Scriptures  could  be  seen 
only   through   the  thick  dark   horn   of   rabbinical   inter- 


THE  HISTORICAL  CONDITIONS.  29 

pretation.  We  live  in  times  when  the  world  has  grown 
wondrously  wide  and  open  to  man;  when  nations  beat 
in  closest  sympathy  with  each  other;  when  the  thoughts 
of  one  people  swiftly  become  those  of  another;  when 
commerce  has  so  woven  its  fine  network  round  the  world 
that  all  its  parts  now  feel  connected  and  akin ;  but 
Jesus  lived  in  a  land  which  prided  itself  on  its  ignorance' 
and  hatred  of  the  foreigner,  where  the  thought  of  common 
brotherhood  or  kinship  could  only  rise  to  be  cast  out  and 
abhorred.  In  our  day  nature  has  been  interpreted,  the 
physical  universe  has  become  practically  infinite  in  space 
and  time,  filling  the  soul  with  a  sense  of  awe  in  its  presence 
the  earlier  ages  could  not  possibly  have  experienced  ;  but 
in  Christ's  day  and  to  His  countrymen  nature  was  but  a 
simple  thing,  of  small  significance,  with  few  mysteries. 
Ours  is,  indeed,  a  day  that  might  well  create  a  great  man, 
a  universal  teacher,  the  founder  of  a  new  faith.  Yet  where 
is  the  person  that  thinks  it  possible  for  our  historical  con- 
ditions to  create  a  Christ  ?  Strauss  did  not  think  they 
could,  for  Christ  was  to  him  the  supreme  religious  genius, 
unapproached,  unapproachable,  who  must  in  His  own 
order  stand  alone  for  all  time.  Renan  does  not  th'ink  so, 
for  to  him  Christ  is  a  Creator,  the  Founder  of  the  absolute 
religion,  who  did  His  work  so  well  that  it  only  remains  to 
us  to  be  His  continuators.  But  if  the  creation  of  Christ 
transcends  our  historical  conditions,  was  it  possible  to  His 
own  ?  Or  does  He  not  stand  out  so  much  their  superior 
as  to  be,  while  a  Child  of  time,  the  Son  of  the  Eternal, 
the  only  Begotten  who  has  descended  to  earth  from  the 
bosom  of  the  Father,  that  He  might  declare  Him  ? 


II. 


THE  NARRATIVES   OF   THE  BIRTH  AND 
INFANCY. 

The  sun  while  setting  in  the  west  often  throws  upon  the 
eastern  heaven  a  burnished  shadow,  the  reflection  of  the 
golden  glory  in  which  he  dies.  So,  many  an  infancy  has 
been  transfigured  by  the  light  of  a  great  manhood,  beauti- 
fied by  the  marvellous  hues  shed  back  upon  it  from  a 
splendid  character  and  career.  The  childhood  of  Moses 
was  to  later  Hebrew  tradition  a  childhood  of  wonder  and 
miracle.  Ancient  Greece  made  her  heroes  sons  of  the 
gods,  men  dear  to  heaven,  for  whom  the  Olympians  plotted 
and  schemed,  and  round  whom  they  strenuously  fought. 
The  proud  fancy  of  the  Romans  made  Romulus  the  suck- 
ling of  the  she-wolf ;  the  early  history  of  his  "eternal  city  " 
a  history  of  marvel  and  miracle,  of  deeds  and  events  pro- 
phetic of  universal  empire.  The  fame  of  the  life  reflected 
on  the  infancy  may  thus  become  in  a  creative  imagination 
the  fruitful  mother  of  myths,  credible  in  an  age  of  wonder 
and  childlike  faith,  incredible  in  an  age  of  critical  and 
rational  thought. 

Now,  are  the  stories  of  Christ's  birth  and  infancy  but 
the  luminous  and  tinted  shadows  of  His  marvellous  man- 
hood, the  creations  of  intense  and  exalted  dreamers  who, 
bidden  by  their  own  fancies,  made  the  child  the  father  of 
the  man  ?  So  it  has  been  thought  and  said.  The  nar- 
ratives which  describe  the  coming  of  Jesus  have  been 
resolved  into  myths,  no  more  historical  than  the  stories 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY.  31 

which  tell  the  adventures  of  the  gods  of  ancient  Greece. 
Yet  on  the  surface  one  great  difference  lies,  which  may 
have  no  critical,  but  has  some  rational,  worth.  The  Greek 
mythologies  became  incredible  centuries  since,  faith  in 
them  died  out  and  no  man  could  revive  it ;  but  the  story 
of  Christ's  birth  and  infancy  still,  remains  credible,  need 
not  offend  the  most  cultured  reason  of  the  most  cultured 
age.  They  were  proved,  by  actual  history  too,  creations 
of  the  childlike  imagination,  credible  to  the  fanciful  child, 
incredible  to  the  rational  man ;  but  it  has  been  proved,  by 
long  and  extensive  human  experience  too,  to  be  as  lit  for 
belief  by  the  man  as  by  the  child,  to  be  capable  of  vin- 
dication before  the  calm  and  critical  reason.  In  the 
presence  of  rational  thought  legends  die  but  truths  live, 
and  in  their  respective  fates  their  respective  characters  are 
revealed. 

The  story  of  the  birth  and  infancy  is  told  in  the  First 
and  Third  Gospels  with  a  simple  grace  that  excels  the 
most  perfect  art.  Its  theme,  hardly  to  be  handled  without 
being  depraved,  is  touched  with  the  most  exquisite  deli- 
cacy. The  veil  where  it  ought  to  conceal  does  not  reveal ; 
where  it  can  be  lifted,  it  is  lifted  softly,  and  neither  torn 
nor  soiled.  There  is  as  little  trace  of  a  coarse  or  prurient, 
as  of  an  inventive  or  amplifying,  faculty.  The  reticence 
is  much  more  remarkable  than  the  speech.  Indeed,  the 
distinction  between  history  and  legend  could  not  be  better 
marked  than  by  the  reserve  of  the  canonical  and  the  vulgar 
tattle  of  the  apocryphal  Gospels.  These  latter  are,  so  far 
as  they  concern  the  birth  and  infancy,  full  of  grossness 
and  indecency,  of  rude  speech  as  to  things  that  become 
unholy  by  being  handled.  But  our  narratives  are  pure  as 
the  air  that  floats  above  the  eternal  hills;  are  full,  too,  of 
an  idyllic  sweetness  like  the  breath  of  summer  when  it 
comes  laden  with  the  fragrance  of  garden  and  field.  The 
lone,  lovely,  glad,  yet  care-burdened   mother;    the   holy 


32  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

beautiful  Child,  bringing  such  unsearchable  wealth  of 
truth  and  peace  to  men ;  the  meanness  of  His  birthplace, 
the  greatness  of  His  mission ;  the  heedless  busy  world 
unconscious  of  the  new  conscious  life  that  has  come  to 
change  and  bless  it ;  the  shepherds  under  the  silent  stars, 
watching  and  watched  ;  the  angel-choir,  whose  song 
breaks  the  silence  of  earth  with  the  music  of  heaven ;  the 
wretched  and  merciless  Herod,  growing  in  cruelty  as  he 
grows  nearer  death,  a  contrast  to  the  gentle  Infant  who 
comes  with  **  peace  and  good-will  towards  men ;  '*  the 
Magi,  wanderers  from  the  distant  East  in  search  of  light 
and  hope :  and  round  and  through  all  the  presence  in 
angel  and  dream,  in  event  and  word,  of  the  Eternal  God 
who  loves  the  fallen,  and  begins  in  humanity  a  work  of 
salvation  and  renewal — these  all  together  make,  when 
read  in  the  letter  but  interpreted  by  the  spirit,  a  matchless 
picture  of  earthly  beauty  and  pathos  illumined  and  sublimed 
by  heavenly  love.  Whatever  fate  criticism  may  have  in 
store  for  our  narrative,  it  must  ever  remain  a  vehicle  of 
holy  thoughts  to  every  mind  that  lies  open  to  the  spiritual 
and  divine. 

The  narratives  of  the  Birth  and  Infancy  may  be  studied 
either  on  their  critical  and  historical,  or  their  ideal  and 
intellectual,  side.  If  on  the  first,  the  questions  mainly 
concern  their  authenticity  and  trustworthiness ;  if  on  the 
second,  the  questions  chiefly  relate  to  their  interpretation 
and  significance.  But  while  the  two  classes  of  questions 
are  distinct,  they  yet  interpenetrate.  If  the  critical  and 
historical  questions  are  answered  in  a  way  adverse  to  the 
authenticity  and  credibility  of  the  narratives,  then  they 
must  be  regarded  as  legendary,  and  explained  as  creations 
of  a  more  or  less  childlike  imagination.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  ideal  and  intellectual  questions  can  be  so 
answered  as  to  satisfy  the  reason,  the  answer  may  have 
considerable  critical  worth.     It  ought  to  show,  at  least. 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY.  33 

that  the  narratives  need  not  be  rejected  a  priori  as  contra- 
rational,  that  they  speak  of  matters  the  intellect  can  con- 
ceive and  believe.  It  ought  to  show,  too,  that  they  are 
not  explicable  like  ordinary  legends,  cannot  be  explained 
by  the  normal  action  of  the  mythical  faculty,  are  due  to 
other  psychological  factors  than  those  that  have  produced 
the  myths  of  the  world's  childhood.  If  so  much  can  be 
shown,  the  objections  taken  in  limine  to  these  narratives 
must  lose  much  of  their  power.  It  is  our  purpose  to 
deal  here  with  the  phase  of  the  subject  last  indicated, 
to  endeavour  to  discover  the  psychological  roots  of  the 
narratives,  though  within  our  limits  but  little  can  be  done 
to  determine  at  once  their  critical  and  intellectual  worth. 

There  is  a  peculiar  fitness  in  discussing  here  the  problem 
just  stated.  There  was  no  part  of  the  evangelical  his- 
tory that  so  early  fell  under  the  charge  of  being  mythical 
as  the  one  now  before  us.  Long  before  the  days  of  Strauss 
its  historical  veracity  had  been  doubted,  and  the  readiness 
with  which  even  orthodox  theologians  had  confessed  to  its 
mythical  or  semi-mythical  character  helped  to  suggest  to 
him  his  own  distinctive  hypothesis,  which  was  but  an  ex- 
tension to  the  entire  history  of  a  critical  and  interpretive 
principle  that  had  been  already  applied  to  its  introduction. 
Our  problem,  then,  raises  the  question  as  to  the  mythical 
element  in  the  Gospels  at  what  may  be  regarded  as  the 
most  cardinal  point.  Here  the  mythical  theory  has  its 
strongest,  as  here  it  had  its  first,  foothold;  yet  once  estab- 
lished as  to  these  narratives,  it  cannot  be  confined  within 
their  limits,  must  penetrate  the  whole  body  to  which  they 
belong.  While  the  question  is  particular  in  its  subject,  it 
is  general  in  its  bearings.  In  determining  whether  our 
narratives  are  myths,  we  determine,  in  a  sense,  the  far 
wider  question  whether  our  evangelical  histories  are 
mythical. 

The  narratives  of  the  Birth  and  Infancy  are  peculiar  to 


34  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

our  First  and  Third  Gospels,  and  they  stand  in  each  with 
agreements  and  differences  that  are  alike  significant.  In 
Matthew  the  Jewish,  in  Luke  the  Gentile,  standpoint  and 
purpose  are  apparent.  Their  influence  is  seen  (i)  in  the 
genealogies.  Matthew  traces  the  descent  of  Jesus  Christ, 
"  the  son  of  David,  the  son  of  Abraham ;  " '  but  Luke 
ascends  higher,  makes  Jesus  **  the  son  of  Adam,  who  was 
the  son  of  God."  ^  The  difference  is  significant.  Matthew 
the  Hebrew,  addressing  Hebrews,  presents  Jesus  as  the 
Messiah,  complying  with  the  conditions  necessary  to  the 
Messiahship  that  He  may  be  qualified  to  fulfil  the  Mes- 
sianic hopes.  But  Luke  the  Greek,  addressing  Greeks, 
presents  Jesus  in  His  common  brotherhood  to  man  and 
native  sonship  to  God.  In  the  one  case  He  is  incorporated 
with  Israel,  in  the  other  with  humanity.  Both  standpoints 
were  universal,  but  with  a  difference.  Matthew  regarded 
Israel  as  a  people  existing  for  the  world,  their  mission 
culminating  in  their  Messiah,  who,  while  of  particular 
descent,  was  of  universal  significance  ;  but  Luke  regarded 
the  race  that  had  grown  from  Adam  as  blossoming  into 
Christ,  who,  while  the  flower  of  the  old,  was  the  seed  of 
the  new  humanity.  Matthew's  genealogy  is  the  vehicle 
of  Prophetic,  but  Luke's  of  Pauline  ideas.  The  first 
represents  Christ  as  a  redeemer  of  Abrahamic,  a  king  of 
Davidic  descent,  appearing  to  fulfil  the  aspirations  of  the 
ancient  people,  and  realize  the  theocratic  ideal ;  but  the 
second  exhibits  Him  as  through  His  descent  from  Adam 
the  blood-relation,  as  it  were, 'of  every  man,  appearing 
that  He  may  create  in  every  man  a  no  less  real  and  inti- 
mate spiritual  relation  with  God.  And  so,  while  Jesus  is 
to  Matthew  the  Messiah,  He  is  to  Luke  the  Second  Adam, 
the  Creator  and  Head  of  the  new  humanity,  sustaining 
universal  relations  and  accomplishing  an  universal  work. 
(2)  In  their  modes  of  conceiving  and  representing  the 
»  Matt.  i.  <«  ■  Luke  iii.  23,  38. 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY,  35 

Child  Jesus.  Both,  indeed,  know  but  the  one  cause  of 
the  Child's  coming,  the  creative  action  of  the  Spirit  of 
God.  Matthew  says,  with  significant  modesty,  Mary 
**  was  found  with  child  by  the  Holy  Ghost ;  "  while  Luke, 
with  greater  fulness  but  equal  purity,  says,  *'  The  Holy 
Ghost  shall  come  upon  thee,  and  the  power  of  the 
Highest  shall  overshadow  thee."  It  is  possible  that  theo- 
1  ^gians  have  here  personalized  too  much.  The  phrase 
*'  Spirit  of  God  "  often  in  the  Old  Testament  denotes  the 
Divine  creative  energy,  the  might  of  God,  active  and 
exercised,  whether  in  the  making  and  maintaining  of  the 
world,  or  the  forming  and  direction  of  man.  And  so  our 
Evangelists  agree  in  representing  Christ  as  the  child  of 
the  Divine  creative  energy,  find  the  cause  of  His  becoming 
and  birth  in  the  action  of  God.  But  the  agreement  here 
gives  point  to  the  differences  elsewhere.  Matthew,  true 
to  his  Jewish  standpoint  and  purpose,  finds  the  birth  to  be 
the  fulfilment  of  a  prophecy,  and  not  satisfied  with  explain- 
ing the  name  Jesus  in  the  sense  Israel  loved,  describes 
and  denotes  Him  by  the  prophetic  title  Emmanuel.  But 
Luke,  while  he  invokes  no  prophet  or  prophecy,  and  sup- 
plies no  special  interpretation  of  the  name,  significantly 
denotes  the  Child  Mary  is  to  bear  as  "  the  Son  of  God." 
The  former  is  here  true  to  the  spirit  and  thought  of  Israel, 
but  the  latter  to  the  theology  of  Paul.  Luke  had  learned 
to  read  the  Christian  facts  in  the  light  of  his  master's 
id^as.  The  Divine  Sonship  of  Christ  was  the  foundation 
of  the  Pauline  theology,  and  is  here  made  the  starting- 
point  of  the  evangelical  history  that  represents  and  em- 
bodies it.  To  the  pupil  as  to  the  teacher  the  Second 
Adam  could  accomplish  this  work  only  as  He  was  '*  the 
Son  of  the  Highest." 

(3)  In  the  narratives  of  the  Infancy,  Matthew  never 
forgets  the  kinghood  of  his  Messiah — the  theocratic  cha- 
racter of  His  mission.     The  Magi  come  from  the  East  in 


36  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIEE  OF  CHRIST. 

search  of  Him  "  that  is  born  king  of  the  Jews  ;  "  their  act 
is  an  act  of  fealty,  of  homage  to  rightful  royalty.  What 
Herod  fears  in  the  Child  is  a  rival — a  king  of  the  ancient 
stock  with  claims  he  and  his  could  not  withstand.  But 
though  it  is  said  that  Christ  "  shall  reign  over  the  house 
of  Jacob,  and  of  his  kingdom  there  shall  be  no  end," 
Luke  in  his  narrative  hardly  finds  a  place  for  the  theo- 
cratic idea.  The  Child  is  set  at  once  in  His  universal 
relations,  a  Saviour  "  to  all  people,"  "  a  light  to  lighten 
the  Gentiles,"  "  the  dayspring  from  on  high,"  risen  "  to 
give  light  to  them  that  sit  in  darkness  and  in  the  shadow 
of  death."  The  standpoint  is  throughout  Pauline.  The 
advent  that  is  celebrated  is  the  advent,  not  of  a  theocratic 
king,  but  of  a  Redeemer  whose  work  is  universal,  who  is 
essentially  related,  on  the  one  hand  to  God  as  a  Son,  on 
the  other  to  man  as  a  Brother. 

But  while  the  Evangelists  remain  true  to  their  respec- 
tive standpoints  and  purposes,  their  narratives  prove  that 
they  could  transcend  both.  The  one  happily  indicates 
the  universalism  of  the  ancient  faith,  the  other  the  his- 
torical relations  and  reverence  of  the  new.  The  Hebrew 
makes  the  heathen  Magi  the  first  to  worship  the  newborn 
King  ;  the  Greek  shows  the  beautiful  love  alike  of  parents 
and  Child  to  the  law,  the  temple,  and  the  customs  of  the 
Fathers.  In  Matthew  the  Gentile  comes  from  the  East 
to  claim  his  right  to  sit  with  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob 
in  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  His  right  is  as  finely  expressed 
as  divinely  recognized.  In  Luke  the  aged  representative 
of  the  faith  and  hope  of  the  past  stands  up  in  the  temple 
to  acknowledge  the  advent  and  proclaim  tbe  work  of  a 
Redeemer.  And  so  each  Evangelist  in  his  own  way  ap- 
proves the  standpoint  and  ratifies  the  purpose  of  the  other. 
Their  difterences  are  not  disagreements,  but  means  by 
which  the  varied  phases  of  a  history  of  universal  and  en- 
during import  may  be  exhibited. 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY,  37 

But  now  we  must  advance  from  what  is  formal  to  what 
is  material  in  the  narratives.  What  is  cardinal  to  each  is 
common  to  both — the  Child  that  is  born  of  Mary  is  the 
Son  of  God,  the  fruit  of  the  overshadowing  "  of  the  Most 
High."  Agreement  on  this  point  is  not  peculiar  to  our 
First  and  Third  Gospels,  but  to  the  New  Testament  books 
as  a  whole.  Though  the  detailed  narratives  are  peculiar 
to  the  former,  allusions  to  the  real  and  ideal  elements  in 
the  birth  of  Christ  are  common  to  the  latter.  Paul  could 
speak  of  Him  as  *'born  of  a  woman,"  "of  the  seed  of 
David  according  to  the  flesh."  ^  Even  the  Fourth  Gospel 
is  most  explicit  in  its  recognition  of  His  natural  birth.  In 
it  His  mother  asserted  her  maternity,  and  He,  in  the  most 
solemn  moment  of  His  life,  confesses  His  sonship.*  Philip 
says  to  Nathanael,  "  We  have  found  him  of  whom  Moses 
in  the  law,  and  the  prophets,  did  write,  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
the  son  of  Joseph."  ^  The  people  of  Capernaum  are  made 
to  inquire,  *'  Is  not  this  the  son  of  Joseph,  whose  father 
and  mother  we  know  ?  "  '^  and  in  Mark  we  have  the  similar 
inquiry,  *'  Is  not  this  the  carpenter,  the  son  of  Mary  ?  "  ^ 
But  alongside  this  recognition  of  the  real  and  material 
birth  stands  the  common  confession  of  a  higher  and  diviner 
being.  The  birth,  but  not  the  parentage,  is  human. 
While  born  of  Mary,  He  is  the  Son  of  God.  The  Fourth 
Evangelist  conceives  the  coming  of  Christ  as  the  becoming 
incarnate  of  the  Divine  and  Eternal  Word  ;  while  Paul  in 
many  a  form  expresses  and  emphasizes  his  belief  in  a  Christ 
who,  "  being  in  the  form  of  God,  did  not  think  equality 
with  God  a  thing  to  be  snatched  at,  but  emptied  Himself 
by  taking  the  form  of  a  servant,  being  made  in  the  like- 
ness of  men."  ^  Now,  as  the  ideal  Gospel,  as  well  as  the 
doctrinal  Epistles,  everywhere  imply  the  human  birth,  and 
often  refer  to  it,  the  narratives  which  describe  this  birth 

Gal.  iv.  4  ;  Rom.  i.  3.        '  John  ii.  3,  4  ;  xix.  26,  27.        3  John  i.  45. 
♦  John  vi.  42.  3  Mark  vi.  3  ;  cf.  iii.  31-35.        ^  PhiL  ii.  6,  7. 


38  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

more  than  imply  the  theory  of  His  higher  nature  and  re- 
lations developed  in  that  Gospel  and  these  Epistles. 
What  is  intellectually  presented  in  the  latter  is  historically 
exhibited  in  the  former,  and  what  we  have  to  explain  is, 
how  men  with  the  passions  and  prejudices,  with  the  in- 
herited tendencies  and  beliefs  of  Jews,  could  come  to  be- 
lieve in  what  can  only  be  described  as  an  incarnation  of 
Deity.  The  problem,  which  is  one  of  deep  and  varied  in- 
terest, must  be  rightly  apprehended.  In  stating  it  we 
must  carefully  distinguish  what  is  accidental  and  formal 
from  what  is  essential  and  material.  Mythical  explana- 
tions have  been  mainly  based  on  critical  analysis  of  the 
form,  on  the  discovery  and  proof  of  correspondences  with 
Old  Testament  history  and  prophecy.  In  a  monotheistic 
religion,  God  can  have  intercourse  with  the  creature  only 
through  the  agency  of  a  special  messenger,  and  the  angel 
of  the  Annunciation  is  suggested  by  the  histories  of  Israel 
and  Ishmael,  Samson  and  Samuel.  The  Song  of  Mary  is 
a  "  plagiarism  "  ^  from  Hannah.  The  birth  at  Bethlehem 
finds  a  double  source  in  the  history  of  David  and  the  pro- 
phecy of  Micah.  The  star  in  the  east  rises  to  fulfil  Ba- 
laam's prophecy.  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  David  becomes  the 
possessor  of  the  names  and  attributes  of  the  Messianic 
King  described  in  the  second  Psalm.  And  so  our  narra- 
tives are  proved  to  be  mythical  by  being  proved  to  be 
fancies  clothed  in  forms  suggested  by  the  Old  Testament 
or  borrowed  from  it.  But  this  is  so  purely  formal  as  to 
be  entirely  irrelevant.  The  really  material  point  is  this — 
the  peculiar  and  specific  character  of  the  belief  the  narra- 
tives embody  in  its  relation  to  the  distinctive  character  oi 
the  men  who  entertain  and  embody  it.  The  first  Christians 
were  Hebrews,  their  leaders  men  of  intensely  Hebraic 
natures ;  yet  their  fundamental  and  most  distinctive  doc- 
trine was  one  profoundly  offensive  to  the  Hebrew  mind  and 
'  Strauss,  Das  Leben  Jesu,  §  58.    Eng.  Tr.,  ii.  52. 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY,  39 

faith.  The  problem  is,  How  did  such  men  come  to  enter- 
tain such  a  belief,  to  be  the  apostles  of  it,  martyrs  for 
it,  so  inspired  by  a  Divine  enthusiasm  in  its  behalf  as  to 
be  transformed  from  illiterate  Jews  into  the  founders  of  a 
new  and  beneficent  religion?  It  is  a  small  and  simple 
thing  to  discover  in  their  ancient  literature  anticipative 
affinities  with  the  forms  of  their  thought ;  the  main  matter 
is  to  discover  the  source  and  cause  of  the  thought  itself, 
which  is  but  another  form  of  our  already  indicated  ques- 
tion as  to  the  psychological  roots  of  the  belief  embodied  in 
the  narratives  of  Christ's  birth  and  infancy. 

Can  our  narratives  be  explained  through  the  Hindu 
mythologies  ?  Can  they  be  traced  to  similar  psychical 
roots  ?  Can  they  be  resolved  into  creations  of  the  mytho- 
poetic faculty  ?  Hindu  mythology  is  an  enormous  growth, 
extending  over  many  thousand  years,  and  so  far  too 
immense  and  complicated  to  be  compared  with  our  short 
and  simple  narratives.  All  that  can  be  done  is  to  com- 
pare them  where  they  seem  to  embody  similar  ideas,  and 
discover  whether  the  psychological  explanation  possible 
in  the  one  case  is  possible  in  the  other.  Well,  then,  the 
idea  of  the  incarnation  of  Deity  is  familiar  to  Hindu  my- 
thology. Brahmanism  knows  it,  and  so,  in  a  sense,  does 
Buddhism.  Divine  appearances  or  manifestations  are 
common  in  the  former  system  :  incarnations  of  Buddha 
are  frequent  in  the  latter.  But  as  Buddhism  is  nominally, 
though  not  really,  atheistic,  it  wants  one  of  the  terms 
most  essential  for  comparison,  and  so  for  our  present 
purpose  had  better  be  dropped  out  of  account. 

The  affinity  of  the  Hindu  and  Christian  ideas  of  incar- 
nation has  often  been  asserted,  and  the  derivation,  now  of 
the  Christian  from  the  Hindu,  and  again  of  the  Hindu 
from  the  Christian,  has  been  confidently  affirmed.  Only 
a  few  years  since  a  German  scholar  endeavoured  to  prove 
traces  of  Christian  ideas  both  in  the  theology  and  ethics 


40  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

of  the  Bhagavad-gita,^  and  the  influence  of  the  Orient  in 
the  schools  of  the  apostolic  and  post-apostolic  age  is  a 
commonplace  of  historical  inquiry.  But  these  inquiries 
have  been  due  to  affinities  that  are  only  apparent,  that 
mask,  indeed,  the  most  radical  antitheses,  (i)  The  idea 
of  incarnation  is  essentially  different.  In  the  Hindu  sys- 
tem incarnations  are  many  and  frequent,  but  in  the  Chris- 
tian there  is  but  one.  In  the  former  they  are  transitory 
and  occasional ;  in  the  latter  it  is  permanent  and  provi- 
dential, necessary  to  produce  the  well-being  of  man  and 
accomplish  the  ends  of  God.  The  Hindu  incarnations  are 
often  monstrous  forms,  effected  to  perform  with  immoral 
violence  works  that  can  hardly  be  called  moral ;  but  the 
Christian  incarnation  is  human,  rational,  the  moral  means 
of  achieving  the  greatest  possible  moral  work.  Multi- 
plicity is  essential  to  the  first,  but  unity  to  the  second. 
Unity  would  be  fatal  to  the  ideas  expressed  by  the  former, 
but  multitude  to  those  represented  by  the  latter.  Were 
the  Hindu  incarnation  conceived  as  happening  but  once, 
it  would  lose  its  essential  character;  to  conceive  the 
Christian  as  happening  oftener  would  be  to  abolish  it. 
But  (2)  the  Hindu  and  Christian  incarnations  express  and 
repose  on  essentially  different  ideas  of  God.  In  India  the 
belief  in  incarnation  is  the  logical  and  necessary  result  of 
the  belief  in  God.  To  the  Hindu,  God  is  no  person,  but 
the  universal  life,  the  inexhaustible  Energy  that,  unhasting, 
unresting,  creates  every  change  and  exists  in  every  mode 
and  in  all  forms  of  being.  As  the  particles  that  make  up 
the  water-drop  may  roll  in  the  ocean,  float  in  the  vapour, 

^  Dr.  Franz  Lorinser,  of  Breslau.  On  the  same  side,  though  occu- 
pying a  much  more  moderate  and  critical  position,  is  Professor  Weber, 
of  Berlin.  Very  strongly  on  the  opposite  side  is  an  eminent  Hindu 
scholar,  the  most  recent  translator  of  the  Bhagavad-gita,  Kashinath 
Tnmbak  Telang.  Professors  Monier  Williams  and  Cowel  lean  favour- 
ably to  the  former  opinion,  without  exactly  adopting  it ;  Dr.  John  Muif 
to  the  latter,  yet  without  definitely  pronouncing  in  its  favour. 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY,  41 

sail  in  the  cloud,  fall  in  the  rain,  shine  in  the  dew,  circu- 
late in  the  plant,  and  return  into  the  ocean  again,  remain- 
ing in  all  their  apparent  changes  essentially  unchanged, 
so  the  universal  energy  or  life  that  is  termed  God  assumes 
the  infinite  variety  of  forms  that  constitutes  the  world  of 
appearances.  But  the  Hebrew  did  not  so  conceive  God. 
His  Deity  was  a  conscious  Mind,  a  voluntary  Power,  the 
living  Maker  and  righteous  Ruler  of  nature  and  man.  He 
was  never  confounded  with  the  world  or  its  life  ;  He  stood 
infinitely  above  both,  the  cause  of  their  changes,  not  their 
subject.  The  Hindu  could  not  separate,  the  Hebrew 
could  not  identify,  God  and  nature.  Incarnation  was  the 
logical  correlate  of  the  Hindu,  but  the  logical  contradiction 
of  the  Hebrew,  idea  of  God.  The  one  reached  it  by  the 
simple  process  of  logical  evolution,  unconsciously  per- 
formed ;  but  the  other  could  reach  it  only  by  a  violent 
logical  revolution.  It  was  a  native  growth  of  the  Hindu 
mind,  especially  as  Brahmanism  had  made  it ;  but  it  was 
utterly  alien  to  the  Hebrew  mind,  especially  as  it  had  been 
educated  and  possessed  by  Judaism.  The  law  of  natural 
mental  development  explains  the  rise  of  the  belief  in  incar- 
nations in  India,  but  it  cannot  explain  what  so  manifestly 
contradicts  it  as  the  rise  of  the  belief  in  the  Incarnation  in 
Judaea. 

Can  our  narratives  be  explained  through  the  Greek  my- 
thology ?  ^  Can  the  psychological  laws  exemplified  by  the 
latter  be  applied  to  the  former  ?  The  Greek  mythology, 
while  it  had  started  from  the  same  point  as  the  Hindu, 
had  yet  had  a  very  different  development.  The  ideas  it 
ultimately  embodied  were  almost  as  unlike  the  distinctive 
ideas  of  the  Hindus  as  of  the  Hebrews.  It  knew,  indeed, 
many  gods  and  sons  of  the  gods,  but  in  these  the  idea  of 
incarnation  was  in  no  proper  sense  expressed.  Gods  and 
men  were  to  the  Greek  alike  created  beings.     They  were 

«  Strauss,  Das  Leben  Jesti,  §§  57,  60. 


42  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

akin,  of  a  kind,  and  stood  so  near  each  other  that  the  god 
was  but  a  magnified  man,  the  man  a  recjuced  god.  The 
god  lived  a  sort  of  corporate  existence,  needed  food  and 
drink;  was  immortal,  not  in  his  own  right,  but  by  virtue 
of  the  peculiar  qualities  of  the  things  he  ate  and  drank  ; 
was,  too,  a  husband  and  father,  capable  of  sustaining  the 
same  relations  as  man,  of  feeling  and  indulging  the  same 
passions.  We  can  say,  then,  in  a  sense,  that  every  Greek 
deity  was  incarnate,  none  lived  an  unembodied  spiritual 
life.  But  incarnation  so  universalized  ceases  to  have  any 
significance  ;  it  belongs  to  the  idea  of  deity,  not  to  his  acts ; 
is  a  necessary  quality  of  his  essence,  not  a  state  voluntarily 
assumed.  Where  God  is  so  conceived.  Divine  Sonship 
becomes  as  natural  and  proper  to  Him  as  to  man.  Belief 
in  it  is  a  logical  necessity.  Men  feel  that  without  it  their 
notion  of  deity  would  remain  inconsistent  and  incomplete. 
And  so  the  theogonic  myths,  so  far  from  offending,  pleased 
and  satisfied  the  early  Greek  mind,  seemed  to  it  a  native 
and  integral  element  of  the  conception  of  God.  But  the 
Hebrew,  who  conceived  God  as  spiritual,  invisible,  lifted 
above  every  creature,  everything  creaturely,  filling  eternity, 
filling  immensity,  could  not  while  his  old  idea  stood  con- 
ceive Him  as  becoming  incarnate,  or  as  sustaining  the 
relation  of  a  Father  to  a  Divine  yet  human  Son.  Into 
the  latter  conception  elements  entered  so  abhorrent  to  the 
former  that  the  one  could  live  only  by  the  death  of  the 
other.  The  conditions  that  allow  the  old  and  the  new  to 
be  affiliated  as  parent  and  child  are  here  absent. 

The  belief,  then,  embodied  in  our  narratives  was  not  a 
natural  product  of  Judaism,  and  cannot  be  explained  by 
any  normal  evolution  of  thought  within  it.  Yet  the  men 
who  made  and  first  held  it  were  Jews,  and  their  two  most 
creative  personalities  were  men  of  intensely  Hebraic 
natures.  Paul  was  a  strong  type  of  the  scholastic  Jew, 
the  man  trained  in  the  methods,  skilled  in  the  dialectic  of 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY,  43 

the  schools ;  Peter  was  a  thorough  representative  of  the 
unlettered  class,  stalwart,  robust  in  mind,  faithful  to  ideas 
and  duties  consecrated  by  ancient  custom,  not  very  open 
in  eye  and  heart  to  new  lights  and  loves.  ^Paul  was 
possessed  by  the  prejudices  of  the  school,  Peter  by  the 
prejudices  of  the  people  ;  and  in  the  various  orders  of 
prejudices  these  may  claim  to  rank  as  the  most  invincible. 
And  if  anything  could  have  heightened  the  native  Jewish 
aversion  to  the  ideas  of  Divine  Sonship  and  Incarnation, 
it  must  have  been  the  life  and  death  of  Christ.  The  men 
who  had  known  Him,  who  had  seen  His  poverty,  who  had 
watched  His  sufferings,  who  had  witnessed  the  agony  and 
impotence  of  His  tragic  end,  must  have  had  these  so 
woven  into  their  very  idea  of  Him,  that  He  and  they  could 
never  be  conceived  as  dissociated  or  apart.  Yet  this  was 
the  very  person  they  were  to  conceive  as  the  Son  of  their 
awful  and  eternal  God,  as  the  manifestation  in  the  flesh 
of  their  Almighty  Maker  and  Lord  of  men.  It  is  impos- 
sible that  any  imagination  possessed  by  the  Jewish  con- 
ception of  God,  and  filled  by  the  recollection  of  the 
poverty,  suffering,  and  crucifixion  of  Christ,  could  ever, 
by  a  process  purely  mythical,  have  placed  that  God  and 
this  Christ  in  the  relations  expressed  by  the  terms  Sonship 
and  Incarnation. 

The  men,  then,  did  not  pass  by  an  easy  and  natural 
transition  from  their  old  to  their  new  belief.  They  were, 
we  might  almost  say,  driven  to  the  new  in  spite  of  the 
old,  and  the  forces  that  drove  them  were  revolutionary. 
There  occurred  a  great  and  creative  change  in  their  con- 
ception of  God.  The  God  of  the  Jews  was  eternal, 
almighty,  august,  yet  He  was  the  God  of  the  Jews  only, 
loved  them,  loved  no  other  people.  But  the  God  the  dis- 
ciples came  to  know  through  Jesus  Christ  was  the  God  of 
men,  a  Being  of  universal  benevolence,  of  love  that  em- 
braced the  world  and  sought  its  good.     He  pitied  like  a 


44  STUVIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

Father,  was  a  Father,  and  every  man  was  His  child. 
But  this  new  conception  seemed  to  involve  two  great 
consequences,  the  first  as  to  the  nature  of  God,  the  second 
as  to  His  relations  to  man.  As  to  the  first,  it  was  seen 
that  'He  could  not  be  essential  and  eternal  love  and  be 
essentially  or  have  been  eternally  solitary.  Love  is  a 
social  affection,  and  is  impossible  without  society.  Love 
of  self  is  selfishness,  and  so  it  was  necessary  to  conceive  a 
God  who  is  love  and  loves  as  having  another  than  Him- 
self, who  stood  over  against  Himself,  made  society, 
received  and  reciprocated  His  affection.  An  object 
is  as  necessary  to  love  as  a  subject,  and  so  Divine 
love  is  possible  only  where  there  is  Divine  society; 
in  other  words,  there  can  be  no  eternal  Father  unless 
there  be  an  eternal  Son,  His  mirror  and  reflection.  But 
God  so  conceived  ceases  to  be  the  barren  and  abstract  God 
of  Judaism,  becomes  the  living  Father  in  heaven,  in  whom, 
through  Jesus  Christ,  we  believe,  and  to  whom  He  taught 
us  to  pray.  And  so  from  the  first  a  second  consequence 
followed — the  Divine  relation  to  man  was  conceived  in  a 
grander  and  sweeter  and  more  perfect  way.  Man  was 
God's  child,  owed  Him  a  child's  obedience  and  love  ;  was 
true  to  the  Divine  idea  of  His  nature  only  as  he  gave  to 
its  Giver  what  was  His  due.  His  relation  to  God  did  not 
depend  on  his  descent  from  a  particular  patriarch  :  every- 
where and  always  he  stood  by  obedience,  fell  by  disobe- 
dience ;  but  even  after  and  from  his  fall  he  could  be  saved 
by  the  grace,  which  meant  the  love,  of  God.  And  as  He 
loved  all.  He  loved  to  see  none  perish,  to  see  all  saved. 
He  could  do  nothing  else  and  nothing  less.  His  nature 
being  love.  But  since  it  was  so  He  could  not  refuse 
sympathy,  could  not  deny  sacrifice,  when  by  these  alone 
men  could  be  reached  and  saved.  And  so  out  of  the  new 
thought  of  God  which  came  by  Jesus  Christ  there  issued 
by  natural  and  necessary   growth  the  belief  in   the  onl> 


THE  BIRTH  AND  INFANCY,  45 

begotten  Son  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  who  had  come 
forth  to  declare  Him.  The  relations  of  God  to  His  world 
were  the  copy  and  counterpart  of  relations  immanent  and 
essential  to  God  Himself;  and  the  love  in  God  to  God 
which  we  express  by  the  terms  Father  and  Son  became  at 
once  the  source  and  image  of  the  love  expressed  to  man 
by  the  facts  of  incarnation  and  sacrifice. 

The  change  thus  effected  in  the  fundamental  conception 
of  the  disciples  made  its  presence  felt  everywhere.  It 
set  the  person,  the  life,  the  death  of  Jesus  in  a  new  light 
— created  as  to  Him  an  order  of  ideas  that  can  be  under- 
stood only  when  the  Prologue  to  the  Fourth  Gospel  is 
made  to  underlie  the  opening  narratives  of  the  First  and 
Third.  It  set  Him,  too,  in  a  new  relation  to  man,  made 
Him  the  centre  and  head  of  humanity,  to  whom  the  past 
centuries  had  pointed,  from  whom  the  coming  centuries 
were  to  flow.  His  appearance  was  no  accident,  no  Divine 
chance,  the  more  miraculous  the  less  designed ;  but  the 
fulfilment  of  a  gracious  Divine  purpose,  or  rather  a  sub- 
lime Divine  necessity,  which  was  yet  but  the  means  to 
highest  Divine  ends.  And  so  the  new  faith  was  at  once 
transforming  and  transfiguring,  made  the  poverty  of 
Christ  the  wealth  of  the  world,  the  humiliation  of  the  Son 
the  condition  of  glorifying  the  Father,  and  His  death  the 
power  of  God  unto  our  salvation. 


III. 

THE  GROWTH  AND  EDUCATION  OF  JESUS : 
HIS  PERSONALITY. 

The  Person  of  Christ  is  the  perennial  glory  and  strength 
of  Christianity.  If  the  life  of  our  faith  had  depended  on 
its  signs  and  wonders,  it  had  perished  long  ago.  If  they 
win  the  ages  of  wonder  they  offend  the  ages  of  inquiry  ; 
and  as  the  world  grows  in  years  credulous  spirits  die  and 
critical  spirits  increase.  But  the  Person  that  stands  at 
the  centre  of  our  faith  can  never  cease  to  be  winsome 
while  men  revere  the  holy  and  love  the  good.  His  moral 
loveliness  has  been  as  potent  to  charm  the  human  spirit 
into  obedience  as  the  harp  of  the  ancient  mythical 
musician  was  to  charm  nature  into  listening  and  life ; 
has  by  its  soft  strong  spell  held  the  wicked  till  he  ceased 
to  sin  and  learned  to  love,  and  the  tender  and  guileless 
heart  of  a  child  began  to  beat  within  his  breast. 

The  Person  of  Christ  makes  the  Christian  faith,  is  its 
sacred  source  and  highest  object.  In  it  lie  hidden  the 
causes  of  what  He  afterwards  became.  Circumstances 
did  not  make  Him ;  God  did.  Thousands  lived  under 
the  same  conditions,  in  the  midst  of  the  same  society, 
under  the  same  heaven,  in  communion  with  the  same 
nature,  were  born  in  the  same  faith,  nurtured  in  the 
same  schools  and  under  the  same  influences ;  yet  of  these 
thousands  not  one  can  be  named  with  even  the  most 
distant  claim   to   be   compared  or  matched   with   Jesus, 


BIS  PERSONALITY.  47 

And  why  from  among  the  many  millions  living  in  His  own 
land  and  time  did  He  alone  become  the  Christ  ?  The 
ultimate  answer  must  be  sought  in  His  nature,  in  His 
person.  That  was  His  own,  not  given  by  man,  but  by 
God,  full  of  the  potencies  that  have  blossomed  into  the 
glorious  Being  that  has  overlooked  and  ruled  the  ages. 
Education  can  educe,  but  cannot  produce ;  circumstances 
may  plant  and  water,  but  they  cannot  create  ;  the  in- 
crease must  be  given  of  God.  Where  the  eminence  is  so 
pre-eminent  and  peculiar,  the  name  that  best  expresses 
the  nature  and  relations  of  Him  who  achieved  it  is  the 
one  proper  to  Jesus  alone  among  men,  "  the  Son  of  God." 
The  Person  of  Jesus  stands  in  the  most  intimate  and 
organic  relation  with  His  words  and  acts.  Here  the 
speaker  and  thing  spoken  are,  while  distinguishable  and 
different,  inseparable.  The  teaching  of  Jesus  is  His  arti- 
culated character,  His  Person  the  realized  religion  of 
Christ.  The  more  the  Person  is  studied  the  better  should 
the  religion  be  understood ;  in  the  former  the  latter  finds 
its  creative  source.  Of  the  works  Jesus  performed,  the 
greatest  must  ever  remain  Himself,  since  beyond  all 
question  the  grandest  element  in  Christianity  is  Christ. 
But  if  we  are  to  know  what  He  was  as  a  result,  we  must, 
in  some  measure  at  least,  know  how  He  became  it.  He 
was  not  an  abnormal  being,  an  artificial  or  mechanical 
product,  but  a  growth.  His  manhood  developed  out  of  a 
youth  which  had  beneath  it  boyhood,  childhood,  and 
infancy.  For  the  perfect  man  could  be  perfect  only  as 
His  becoming  was  throughout  human.  A  being  sent  full- 
formed  into  the  world  had  been  a  monstrosity — a  stranger 
to  our  kind,  like  us,  perhaps,  in  form,  unlike  us  in  every- 
thing essential  and  distinctive.  But  He  who  came  to  lift 
us  from  our  evil  came  to  do  it  in  and  through  our  nature, 
and  in  Him  it  orbed  into  the  one  perfect  Person  that  has 
at  once  dignified  and  redeemed  humanity.     And  so    He 


48  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

has   made  the  world  feel  that  while  He  hates    evil    He 
loves  man,  and  men  can  cry  to  Him — 

Be  near  us  when  we  climb  or  fall : 
Ye  watch,  like  God,  the  rolling  hours, 
With  larger,  other  eyes  than  ours. 

To  make  allowance  for  us  all. 

The  growth  of  Christ  must,  then,  be  considered  natural: 
strictly  so  alike  in  its  physical,  intellectual,  and  ethical 
aspects.  His  manhood  can  be  real  only  as  it  remains  a 
manhood  realized  within  the  limits  necessary  to  man. 
The  supernatural  in  Jesus  did  not  exist  for  Jesus,  but  for 
the  world.  What  He  achieved  for  others  might  manifest 
the  superhuman ;  what  He  achieved  in  Himself  showed 
the  human  —  humanity  under  its  common  conditions, 
obedient  to  its  own,  or  rather  its  Maker's  laws,  become 
perfect,  the  realization  of  its  eternal  ideal  or  archetype  as 
it  exists  in  God.  But  one  so  conceived  is  not  remote 
from  God — rather  is  penetrated  and  possessed  by  Him. 
His  humanity  is  full  of  the  Divine — is  a  Divine  humanity. 
Yet  it  is  so  for  moral  rather  than  physical  reasons, 
because  of  spiritual  rather  than  essential  relationships. 
Were  His  humanity  but  a  mask  for  His  divinity,  it  would 
be  illusive,  without  the  meaning  that  belongs  to  truth,  or 
the  strength  that  belongs  to  reality.  But  if  we  must  hold 
the  reality  of  His  manhood  we  must  not  shrink  from  the 
idea  of  His  growth.  Luke,  at  least,  did  not.  He  ^  exhibits 
the  marvellous  boy  as  increasing  in  wisdom  and  stature, 
and  in  favour  with  God  and  man. 

But  this  growth  cannot  be  well  conceived  apart  from 
the  scenes  and  influences  amid  and  under  which  it  went 
on.  These,  therefore,  need  to  be  collected  into  a  more 
or  less  coherent  picture.  We  must  begin  with  His  Home. 
It  was  at  Nazareth,  a  town  which  survives  almost  un- 

»  Luke  ii.  52. 


HJS  PERSONALITY.  49 

changed  to  this  day.  Its  narrow  streets,  tall  houses,  here 
and  there  almost  meeting  overhead,  its  still  life,  flowing 
undisturbed  by  the  thoughts  that  move  and  the  fears  that 
agitate  the  great  world,  are  now  much  as  they  were  then. 
The  home  was  poor.  Joseph  was  an  artizan,  and  Mary, 
woman  of  all  work  as  well  as  mother.  Their  house 
would  be  of  the  common  Eastern  type,  house  and  work- 
shop in  one,  lighted  mostly  by  tiie  door,  the  light  showing 
curiously  mingled  the  furniture  of  the  family  and  the 
tools  of  the  mechanic. '  The  daily  fare  would  be  humble 
enough ;  everywhere  the  signs  of  less  meanness  perhaps, 
but  more  poverty  than  need  be  found  in  the  home  of  our 
modern  carpenter.  The  circumstances  were  not  pro- 
pitious to  magnanimity,  to  wealth  and  majesty  of  soul. 
Town  and  home  were  alike  insignificant,  poor.  Nazareth 
was  a  remote  place,  neither  loved  by  the  Jew  nor  admired 
by  the  Gentile.  It  was  not  a  centre  into  which  the  wise 
of  many  lands  gathered,  where  the  words  of  the  mighty 
dead  were  studied,  and  their  spirits  unsphered.  Small  as 
to  population,  secluded  as  to  position,  it  nestled  in  its 
quiet  nook,  undisturbed  by  the  march  of  armies,  or  the 
stiller  but  grander  march  of  mind.  There  Jesus  grew, 
His  genial  soul  making  the  soil  genial,  unwatered  by 
strange  dews,  unwarmed  by  alien  suns,  in  breeding,  a 
Child  of  Moses,  in  birth,  "  the  Son  of  God." 

But  the  home  is  made  by  the  Parents ;  they  determine 
its  ethical  and  intellectual  character.  For  the  Hebrew 
the  home  had  pre-eminent  sanctity ;  his  religion  dignified 
and  blessed  it.  Paternity"  was  honourable,  the  sign  of 
Divine  favour,  children  being  "  the  heritage  of  the  Lord." 
Honour  to  parents  was  the  highest  and  best  rewarded 
human  duty,  stood  second  only  to  the  honour  due  to  God. 
The  children  God  gave  man  was  to  teach  ;  He  who  made 
the  family  was  to  receive  its  homage.  And  so  the  home 
*  Renan,  Vie  de  Jesus,  c.  ii. 


50  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

was  to  be  a  school  for  religion  :  the  father  was  to  instruct 
his  children,  and  command  them  that  **they  shall  keep 
the   way  of  the    Lord,    to   do  justice    and  judgment."* 
Parents  and  children  in  Israel  had  thus  a  sanctity  to  each 
other  unknown  to  the  men  of  Greece  and   Rome ;  their 
relations  were  throughout  religious,  consecrated  by  God 
and  defined  by  His  law.     And  if  we  may  interpret  the 
home  at  Nazareth  through  the  mind  and  speech  of  Jesus, 
it  must  have  been  an  ideal  Hebrew  home.     It  is  but  rea- 
sonable to  suppose  that  in  His  later  teaching  His  earlier 
experiences  are  in  part  reflected.     "Father**  is  a  name 
He  so  uses  as  to  show  that  for  Him  it  was  steeped  in  the 
fondest  and  tenderest  associations,  was  the  symbol  of  loved 
memories  and  endeared  relationships.     In  the  picture  of 
the  father  who  cannot  resist  his  child's  pleading,  ^  or  the 
still  grander  picture  of  one  who  knows  how  to  forgive  and 
restore  a  penitent  son,  and  how  to  rebuke  and  forgive  a 
son  hyper-  because  hypo-  critical,^  we  seem  to  have  features 
that  could  be  painted  only  by  a  hand  guided  by  a  heart 
that  had  known  before  the  imagination  had  created.     Even 
within  "  Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven  "  there  may  live 
a  transfigured  earthly  reminiscence,  the  recollection  of  a 
father  who  had  passed  into  the  heavens.     Childhood,  too, 
is  beautiful  to  Jesus,  the  manifest  image  of  a  time  when 
He  lived,  sheltered  and  tended  by  prescient  love.*     Years 
that  were  so  sunny  to  memory  could  not  have  been  bitter  to 
experience,  must  have  been  possessed  of  the  light  and  love 
that  are  to  the  heart  of  man  as  the  life  of  God.     Then  He 
learned  the  value  and  the  strength  of  human  affection, 
the  holy  and  beautiful  love  that  in  the  child  responds  to 
the  brooding  and  creative  love  of  the  parent. 

Beside  the  home  there  stood  the  School.      The  Jew 
loved  education,  to  him  instruction  in  the  Law  was  the 

»  Gen.  xviii.  19.        '  Matt.  vii.  9-1 1.        3  Luke  xv.  Ii,  ff. 
4  Matt,  xviii.  1-6,  10-14;  xix.  13-15. 


HIS  PERSONALITY.  51 

most  important  concern  in  life.  Josephus  boasted  that 
the  study  of  it  commenced  with  the  first  dawn  of  conscious- 
ness, and  was  so  conducted  as  to  involve  both  knowledge 
and  action.  *  While  the  Spartans  were  anxious  about 
practice,  and  the  Athenians  and  other  Greeks  about  theory, 
the  Hebrew  Lawgiver  had  so  carefully  bound  both  toge- 
ther, that  to  be  well  instructed  in  the  Law  was  not  only 
to  know  its  doctrine,  but  to  observe  its  precepts.*  He  de- 
clared that  He  had  had  so  full  and  accurate  a  knowledge  of 
the  Law  in  His  fourteenth  year,  that  He  was  consulted  by 
the  chief  priests  and  first  men  of  the  city.^  Philo,  too,  says 
that  the  Jews  were  from  their  earliest  youth  so  instructed 
in  the  Law  as  to  bear  in  their  souls  its  very  image.*  This 
love  of  education,  this  zeal  for  instruction  in  the  Law,  was 
one  of  the  most  distinctive  features  in  Judaism.  And  so 
it  was  a  favourite  axiom,  "  He  who  knows  not  the  Law  is 
accursed."  ^  Rabbi  Hillel  had  said,  *'  An  ignorant  can 
never  be  a  really  pious  man  ;  "  and  "the  more  instruction 
in  the  Law,  the  more  life,  the  more  of  the  great  school, 
the  greater  the  wisdom ;  the  more  counsel,  the  more  rea- 
sonable the  conduct.  He  who  attains  knowledge  of  the 
Law,  gains  life  in  the  world  to  come."  ^  Rabbi  Chananya 
ben  Teradyon  said,  "  If  two  sit  together  and  speak  not  of 
the  Law,  then  are  they  a  company  of  mockers,  of  whom 
it  is  said,  *  Sit  not  where  the  mockers  sit.'  But  if  two 
sit  together  and  speak  of  the  Law,  then  is  the  shechina 
present  with  them."  7 

Since  enthusiasm  for  the  Law  and  its  study  so  possessed 
the  Jew,  Jesus  could  not  have  remained  uninstructed. 
Schools,  indeed,  in  the  modern,  or  in  any  formal  sense, 
He  could  hardly  have  known.  There  were,  indeed, 
famous  schools  in  Jerusalem,  but  no  evidence  that  in  the 

*  Contra  Apion.,  11,  18.        »  Ibid.  11,  16,  17.        3  Vita,  2. 

4  Legat.  ad  Cajum^  §  31  ;  Ed*  Mang.,  ii.  577. 

*  John  vii.  59.        ^  Pirke  Aboih,  ii.  5,  7.        7  Ibid.  iii.  2. 


52  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

time  of  Jesus  any  existed  in  Nazareth.  The  wonder  both 
of  Nazareth  and  Jerusalem  as  to  how  He  had  come  by 
His  wisdom,  and  as  to  how  He  knew  His  letters,"  proves 
that  He  had  not  been  educated  in  any  school.  Yet  He 
must  have  had  teachers.  He  knew  letters,  could  read  the 
Scriptures,  was  familiar  with  the  interpretations  of  tradi- 
tion and  the  school.=^  We  may  well  believe  that  His 
parents  had  been  His  earliest  teachers.  An  authority  no 
Hebrew  could  despise  bound  them  to  teach  their  children 
the  law  and  the  words  of  God.3  The  proverbs  the  Jew 
loved,  the  short  pregnant  sayings  into  which  were  con- 
densed the  experience  and  wisdom  of  the  ancients,  were 
taught  the  child  by  father  and  mother  alike.^  Then  there 
was  the  synagogue,  which,  as  Philo  says,^  was  everywhere 
an  "institution  for  teaching  prudence  and  bravery,  temper- 
ance and  justice,  piety  and  holiness  ;  in  brief,  every  virtue 
which  the  human  and  Divine  recognises  and  enjoins.'* 
Here  Jesus  must  often  have  been,  and  here  His  wondrous 
open  soul  must  have  learned  by  every  sense.  In  the 
society  of  the  worshippers  He  would  enter  into  the  fellow- 
ship of  Israel,  become  conscious  of  affinities  that  would 
awaken  many  sympathies,  especially  with  the  sins,  the 
sorrows,  the  hopes,  the  aspirations  of  man.  There,  too,  as 
He  listened  to  the  skilled  yet  childish  interpretation  of  the 
Law,  as  He  watched  the  masked  yet  apparent  struggles 
for  place.  He  may  have  learned  to  understand  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees.  The  synagogue  may  have  been  the  school 
that  instructed  Him  in  the  idola  of  the  human  heart, 
showed  Him  how  man  could  be  so  loyal  to  his  own  dreams 
and  doctrines  as  to  be  faithless  to  Divine  realities  and 
truths.      But  with   Him  to  see  the  folly  and  weakness 

*  Matt.  xiii.  54;  Mark  vi.  2;  John  vii.  15. 

»  Matt.  xii.  3,  xix.  4;  Luke  iv.  16;  Matt.  xv.  1-9,  xxiii.  2,  f!.,  v 
17-20  ;  Mark  xii.  35. 

3  Deut.  xi.  19.  4  Prov.  i.  8,  xxxi.  i, 

5  Vita  Moses,  lib.  iii.  §  27  ;  Mang.,  ii.  168. 


HIS  PERSONALITY.  53 

of  man  was  only  the  better  to  know  the  wisdom  and 
strength  of  God.  As  He  sat  listening  to  the  voices  of 
heaven  and  earth,  now  blending  in  strange  sweet  music, 
and  again  meeting  in  sad  deep  discord,  whaf  thoughts, 
what  visions  of  man's  struggle  towards  God  and  God's 
endeavour  to  reach  man  must  have  come  to  Him !  In 
experiences  like  these  the  Christ  would  find  teachers 
qualifying  Him  to  be  a  merciful  and  faithful  High  Priest, 
compassionate  to  the  ignorant  while  dutiful  to  righteous- 
ness and  truth. 

Then,  His  study  of  the  Scriptures  must  have  been  an 
eminently  educative  study.  His  knowledge  of  them  was 
so  great  as  to  astonish  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  as  well 
as  the  people.  Such  knowledge  was  possible  only  to  years 
of  study  and  meditation,  and  years  so  spent  must  have 
been  full  of  the  noblest  formative  and  informative  influ- 
ences. Those  old  Hebrew  books,  with  their  great  thoughts 
as  to  God,  their  strong  faith  in  His  righteous  rule  and  high 
purposes,  their  record  of  man's  sin  and  error,  yet  resolute 
and  pathetic  endeavour  after  the  light,  must  have  enabled 
the  mind  of  the  Christ  to  penetrate  as  from  below  the 
mysteries  of  the  Divine  nature,  to  see  as  from  above  the 
miseries  of  the  human.  And  as  He  became  conscious  of 
their  meaning.  He  must  also  have  discovered  that  light 
did  not  always  signify  sight,  that  in  man  false  or  half- 
vision  often  made  the  luminous  worse  than  the  dark. 
And  so  the  Scriptures  would  awaken  Him  to  the  unity  of 
the  ages,  the  kinship  of  the  earliest  with  the  latest,  the 
grand  Divine  purpose  that  man  in  all  his  times  and  families 
was  fulfilling,  though  seldom  with  the  consciousness  that 
his  acts  were  being  used  to  promote,  the  ends  of  God.  He 
has  been  to  us  the  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures,  the 
fulfilment  of  the  Law  and  the  Prophets ;  but  before  He 
could  be  so  to  us  they  must  have  been  as  an  interpreter  to 
'  Him,  revealing  Himself  to  Himself,  translating,  as  it  were, 


54  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

reminiscence  into  knowledge.  Study  of  the  written  word 
became  fellowship  with  the  Living  Will,  and  the  visible 
Son  rested  consciously  in  the  embrace  of  the  invisible 
Father. 

But  Nature  is  to  the  spirit  that  loves  her  as  great  an 
educator  as  the  Scriptures.  The  modern  poet  that  knew 
and  loved  her  best  has  made  us  feel  how  she  can  teach 
and  exalt,  creating 

sensations  sweet, 

Felt  in  the  blood,  and  felt  along  the  heart, 

And  passing  even  into  our  purer  mind, 

With  tranquil  restoration  ; 

how  in  her  presence  one  can  hear  "  the  still  sad  music  of 
humanity,'*  and  enjoy 

that  serene  and  blessed  mood 
In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on, 
Until  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame, 
And  even  the  motions  of  our  human  blood, 
Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul. 

Now,  the  purest,  calmest  Spirit  earth  has  known  could 
not  but  find  nature  a  translucent  veil  revealing  the  Father 
it  seemed  to  conceal.  Nazareth  is  said  to  lie  amid  beau- 
ties. The  hill  which  rises  behind  the  city  looks  upon  a 
scene  of  rarest  loveliness;  mountains  that  uplift  their 
snowy  heads  to  a  heaven  that  stoops  to  kiss  them  ;  valleys 
fruitful,  vineclad,  swelling  into  soft  ridges,  melting  into  a 
plain  that  slopes  in  lines  of  rich  beauty  to  the  distant  sea. 
And  the  scene  must  have  been  familiar  to  His  eye,  all  its 
objects  terms  in  which  He  and  heaven  could  speak  to  each 
other,  its  moods  moments  when  Father  and  Son  could 
stand,  as  it  were,  face  to  face.  His  words  show  how  full 
His  mind  was  of  Nature  and  the  truths  she  teaches  to 
those  that  in  loving  her  love  her  Maker.  The  brooding 
heaven,  so  distant  yet  so  near,  where  shone  the  sun  that 


HIS  PERS0NALI7Y.  55 

enlightened  the  earth,  whence  came  the  rain  and  the  heat 
that  fertilized  it,  was  at  once  the  home  and  symbol  of  His 
Father.*  The  lily,  clothed  with  a  loveliness  which  shamed 
the  splendour  of  Solomon ;  the  skimming  swallows  by 
dutiful  diligence  to-day  making  care  for  to-morrow  vain 
and  undutiful ;  the  sparrow  that,  while  unloved  of  man, 
yet  lived  and  multiplied  ;  the  sower  going  out  to  sow  ;  the 
green  blade  breakmg  through  the  dark  soil ;  the  fields 
yellowing  for  the  sickle ;  the  fig-tree  throwing  out  its 
leaves ;  the  vine,  with  its  hanging  clusters  and  grateful 
juices,^  had  attracted  His  eyes,  filled  Him  with  a  sense  of 
the  beauty  that  is  everywhere  in  nature,  of  the  Divine  care 
that  pervades  everything  and  protects  all  life.  Nature 
bears  to  us  another  and  nobler  meaning  since  He  lived, 
and  the  meaning  He  found  for  us  He  must  have  first  found 
for  Himself.  As  He  walked,  "  in  pious  meditation,  fancy 
fed,"  on  the  hill  that  overlooks  Nazareth,  through  the 
vineyards  and  corn-fields  that  clothe  its  slopes ;  as  He 
stood  on  the  shores  of  Gennesareth,  watching  the  calm 
heaven  mirrored  in  the  calm  lake.  His  spirit  in  the  degree 
that  it  opened  to  nature  opened  to  God,  and  humanity 
became  in  Him  conscious  of  its  Divine  affinities,  at  one 
with  the  Father. 

But  man  cannot  be  educated  without  Society;  his  nature 
cannot  develop  all  its  energies  or  breathe  out  all  its  fra- 
grance in  solitude.  The  teacher  of  man  must  know  men, 
must  be  taught  of  men,  that  he  may  teach  man.  And 
Jesus  was  not  denied  the  education  society  alone  can  give. 
He  had  the  discipline  that  comes  of  social  duty.  He  was 
a  Son  and  Brother,  fulfilled  the  duties  proper  to  relations 
so  near  and  tender,  experienced  and  enjoyed  the  affections 

'  Matt.  V.  34,  45,  vi.  9. 

"  Matt.  vi.  25,  26,  28-30,  X.  29,  31  ;  Luke  xii.  6,  7  ;  Matt.  xiii.  3,  ff.  ; 
Mark  iv.  28  ;  John  iv.  35  ;  Matt.  xxi.  19,  xxiv.  32,  xxvi.  21  ;  John  xv. 
1,  flf. 


S6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 


that  brighten  the  home.  He  was  not  a  father,  yet  it  is 
almost  certain  that  He  knew  paternal  cares.  He  was  the 
first,  but  not  the  only  child  of  Mary ;  and  it  is  more  than 
probable  that  Joseph  died  during  the  youth  or  early  man- 
hood of  Jesus.  On  the  death  of  the  father,  the  eldest  Son 
would  inherit  his  responsibilities,  become  the  guardian  and 
bread-winner  of  the  family.  And  so  to  Him  was  granted 
the  Divine  discipline  of  toil,  of  labour  for  the  bread  that 
J  erisheth,  yet  undergone  because  of  relations  that  are  im- 
perishable. Work  for  home  is  a  noble  education.  It  makes 
man  forethoughtful,  unselfish,  dutiful  to  the  weak,  tender 
to  the  sorrowful,  mindful  of  the  loving.  It  had  been  a 
calamity  to  Himself  and  His  mission  had  our  Christ  been 
deprived  of  so  grand  yet  so  universal  a  discipline.  He  was 
not,  and  it  was,  perhaps,  the  condition  of  His  sympathy 
with  poverty  and  toil.  His  own  mother  may  have  been 
the  widow  that  cast  her  mite  into  the  treasury,^  and  his 
own  may  have  been  a  heart  pierced  and  touched  by  a 
child's  cry  for  bread.*  The  education  of  Christ  has  been 
the  education  of  man.  What  He  learned  in  society  and 
the  home  has  helped  Him  to  soften  the  heart  and  sweeten 
the  relations  of  society  throughout  the  world. 

But  we  must  now  study  the  I^ersonality  formed  under 
these  varied  influences.  It  was  unique,  a  new  embodiment' 
of  humanity,  unlike  anything  that  had  been  realized  in 
Israel,  or  indeed  in  the  world.  He  was  no  scribe  or  Pha- 
risee, no  shining  example  of  conventional  goodness  or  the 
traditional  in  character  and  conduct.  While  He  had 
been  educated  in  Galilee  and  within  Judaism,  He  was  no 
Jew,  transcended  in  every  way  the  moral  and  historical 
ideals  of  His  race.  The  ideal  of  the  scribes  was  narrow 
enough  to  be  easily  imitable  in  the  schools ;  and  the  virtues 
they  practised  but  reflected  and  expressed  the  law  they 
studied  and  praised.  Their  characters  were  often  very 
»  Mark  xii.  42.  »  Matt.  vii.  9. 


HIS  PERSONA  LTTY.  5  7 

beautiful,  marked  by  a  fine  simplicity  and  truth  which 
adorned  and  illustrated  their  homely  wisdom.  Thus 
Hillel,  zealous  in  his  study  of  the  law,  but  too  poor  to 
pay  the  entrance  fee  to  the  Beth-ha-Midrasch,  clambers  in 
the  cold  winter  season  up  to  the  window  sill,  that  he  may 
there  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  instructor  within,  and  listens 
till  he  is  found  stiff  with  cold  by  the  astonished  teacher  and 
scholars.^  So  his  distinguished  rival,  Schammai,  thinks  the 
fit  celebration  of  a  feast  a  matter  so  vital  that  when  his 
daughter-in-law  bears  a  boy  during  one,  he  has  her  bed 
made  into  the  likeness  of  a  tabernacle  in  order  that  the 
new-born  child  may  keep  the  feast  after  the  manner  pre- 
scribed in  the  law.^  And  these  are  typical  cases.  The 
pre-eminent  virtues  are  zeal  to  know  what  has  been  de- 
livered and  scrupulous  obedience  to  it.  Knowledge  of  the 
law  is  the  chief  good ;  a  conformity  to  it  that  knows  no 
distinction  between  great  and  little,  essential  and  acci- 
dental, the  noblest  virtue.  But  this  ideal  involves  an  in- 
creative  particularism ;  the  new  is  the  false,  the  original 
the  wrong.  The  knowledge  most  prized  was  remembrance 
— Rabbi  Eliezer  was  praised  as  "  a  well-trough  that  loses 
not  a  drop  of  water; " — the  moral  faculty  most  esteemed  the 
ability  to  imitate  or  reproduce.  So  pecuHar  and  particular 
was  the  ideal  of  the  schools  that  it  could  not  have  been 
either  understood  or  realized  outside  Judaism.  The  man 
perfect  according  to  the  rabinnical  standard  could  not  have 
been  defined  as  a  man,  but  only  as  a  Jew,  had  been  no  citizen 
of  the  world,  but  only  a  child  of  Moses  or  son  of  the  Law. 
But  Jesus  was  the  opposite  of  all  this,  of  a  character  so 
universal  that  He  can  only  be  described  as  the  Man,  of  a 
nature  so  humane  that  He  is  to  us  as  realized  humanity- 
He  created  a  type  of  manhood  so  absolutely  original  that 
it  had  no  fellow  in  his  present  or  past ;  yet  so  absolutely 

*  Delitzsch,  Jesus  tind  Hillel,  pp.  9-1 1. 
•Sztkka,  11,8. 


58  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

true  that  the  world  has  ever  since  said,  "  If  man  is  ever 
to  be  perfect,  he  must  be  as  Jesus  was."  And  so  He  is  as 
little  of  a  Greek  as  of  a  Jew,  He  can  be  placed  in  no  one  of 
the  ethico-national  categories  of  His  own  or  anytime.  He 
does  more  than  embody  Plato's  dream  of  the  righteous 
man,  for  His  righteousness  far  exceeds  the  righteousness 
im.agined  by  the  Greeks.  It  was  but  conformity  to  the 
instituted,  obedience  to  the  laws  established  by  man  and 
approved  of  God ;  but  Christ's  was  a  creative  type,  great 
by  its  very  transcendence  of  what  had  been  instituted  and 
its  might  to  institute  what  was  to  be. 

In  studying  the  Personality  that  developed  under  the 
agencies  and  influences  just  described,  we  are  thus  forced 
to  see  that  they  were  not  creative  or  constitutive,  but  only 
occasional  or  conditional.  It  was  too  transcendental  a  pro- 
duct to  be  the  work  of  a  mere  empirical  factor,  and  finds  its 
material  cause  in  the  living  Person,  though  its  formal  in  the 
conditions  under  which  He  lived.  And  this  becomes  the 
more  apparent  when  we  analyze  its  contents  and  qualities. 
We  cannot,  indeed,  see  the  process,  only  the  result.  The 
man  in  germ,  the  Personality  in  the  making,  we  see  but 
once,'  yet  the  once  is  almost  enough.  The  Child  has  come 
with  His  parents  to  Jerusalem.  The  city,  the  solemnities, 
the  temple,  the  priests,  the  sacrifices,  the  people,  have  stirred 
multitudinous  new  thoug-hts  in  the  marvellous  boy.  He 
becomes  for  the  moment  forgetful  of  His  kin,  conscious  of 
higher  and  diviner  relations,  and  seeks  light  and  sympathy 
where  they  were  most  likely  to  be  found — in  the  temple, 
and  with  the  doctors.  It  is  an  eminently  natural  and 
truthful  incident.  The  ideal  Child,  wise  in  His  innocent 
simplicity,  seeks  the  society  of  simple  but  learned  age, 
feels  at  home  in  it,  wonders  only,  when  sought  and  found, 
that  it  could  be  in  His  mother's  mind  other  than  it  was  in 
His  own.  The  light  that  streams  from  the  question, 
*  Luke  ii.  41,  ff. 


HIS  PERSONALITY.  59 

"  *  Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be  among  my  Father's  matters/ 
in  his  house,  in  search  of  his  truth,  mindful  of  his  pur- 
poses? "  illumines  the  youth,  and  makes  Him  foreshadow 
the  man.  For  He  who  as  boy  was  anxious  to  be' absorbed 
in  His  Father  and  His  Father's  affairs,  became  as  man  the  , 
conscious  abode  of  God.  Here,  indeed,  emerges  the  sub- 
limest  and  most  distinctive  feature  of  His  Personality.  In 
Him,  as  in  no  other,  God  lived  ;  He  lived  as  no  other  ever 
did  in  God.  Their  communion  was  a  union  which  author- 
ized the  saying,  "  I  and  the  Father  are  one ;  "  "  He  that 
hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father."  His  consciousness 
was  full  of  God,  was  consciousness  of  God.  Fellowship, 
with  man  did  not  lessen  it ;  solitude  only  made  it  more 
real.  The  society  of  the  sinful  did  not  disturb  his  serene 
certainty,  or  becloud  for  a  moment  His  sense  of  the  in- 
dwelling Presence.  Amid  faithless  friends  and  bitter  foes, 
in  the  shadow  of  His  doom  and  the  exhaustion  of  His  great 
sorrow,  in  the  agony  of  the  garden,  the  desertion  and 
death  of  the  cross.  He  was  never  without  the  clear  and 
certain  consciousness  of  the  Father's  presence.  And  this 
so  distinctive  feature  of  His  Personality  has  made  Him  of 
pre-eminent  religious  significance.  Since  Jesus  lived,  God] 
has  been  another  and  nearer  Being  to  man ;  and  the  rea- ' 
son  lies  in  that  universal  and  ideal  significance  of  His 
Person  which  made  it  a  symbol  as  well  as  a  reality,  and  a 
symbol  which  showed  that  what  God  was  to  Jesus  He 
might  be  to  every  man,  what  Jesus  was  to  God  every  man 
ought  to  be.  He  who  sails  across  an  unknown  sea  and 
finds  beyond  it  a  continent  is  named  a  discoverer;  and  so 
Jesus,  in  the  region  of  the  Spirit,  standing  where  no  one 
in  human  form  ever  stood  before,  found  a  new  relation  to 
God,  and  became  the  Founder  of  a  new  religion  for  man. 
His  Personality  became  the  creative  type  of  a  new  and 
more  filial  relation  to  God  :  since  His  day  we  have  in* 
herited  the  spirit  of  sons,  and  can  cry,  "Abba,  Father/* 


6o  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

But  His  relation  to  Man  was  in  its  kind  and  degree  as 
perfect  as  His  relation  to  God.  It  rested  on  a  conception, 
at  once  truthful  and  generous.  He  conceived  God  as  He 
is,  and  loved  Him  because  He  is  Love  ;  He  conceived 
man  as  he  ought  to  be,  and  loved  him  for  the  sake  of  the 
Divine  ideal  hidden  under  the  depraved  reality.  Jesus 
loved  holiness  and  hated  sin.  Evil  w^as  not  in  Himself, 
and  His  aversion  to  it  w^as  the  radical  and  invincible 
aversion  of  a  whole  and  holy  nature.  Yet  He  did  not 
allow  His  hatred  of  the  sin  to  become  hatred  of  the  sinners. 
He  discovered  within  the  evil  a  soul  of  good,  and,  what 
was  even  more,  made  them  conscious  of  the  discovery  and 
the  promise  it  contained.  Men  offensive  to  the  traditional 
and  typical  religious  character  are  seldom  treated  with 
mercy.  A  double  and  ineradicable  suspicion  almost  always 
stands  in  the  way  of  reaching  and  restoring  outcasts — 
their  suspicion  of  the  respectable  and  the  religious,  and 
the  suspicion  the  respectable  and  religious  have  of  them. 
A  studiously  correct  society  has  ever  found  excommunica- 
tion and  exclusion  of  the  evil  easier  and  safer  than  recon- 
ciliation and  restoration.  But  Jesus  made  His  way  to  the 
outcasts,  became  their  Friend  in  order  that  they  might 
become  His,  and  as  His,  friends  of  righteousness.  Men 
whose  goodness  was  of  the  conventional  type  thought  they 
had  condemned  Him  when  they  had  named  Him  "the 
friend  of  publicans  and  sinners."  But  His  friendship  was 
justified  by  its  results ;  it  did  not  make  Him  a  publican 
and  a  sinner,  while  it  made  men  who  were  either  or  both 
friends  of  righteousness  and  truth.  His  relation  to  the 
evil  was  absolutely  unique.  He  did  not  satirize  or  sneer 
at  the  sins  and  follies  of  men,  like  the  cynic.  Cynicism 
does  not  so  much  hate  evil  as  despise  folly ;  and,  while  it 
may  keep  the  respectable  from  open  vice,  it  can  never 
restore  the  vicious  to  virtue.  He  did  not,  like  the  con- 
ventional moralist,    hold  Himself  aloof  from  the   fallen. 


HIS  PERSONALITY.  6i 

The  separation  he  enjoins  may  prevent  the  deterioration 
of  the  good,  but  can  never  promote  the  ameHoration  of  the 
bad.  Jesus,  on  the  other  hand,  did  not  allow  the  man's 
evil  to  hide  the  man — saw  that  he  was  a  man  in  spite  of 
the  evil.  In  every  one  there  was  an  actual  and  an  ideal 
— the  actual  might  be  His  own,  but  the  ideal  was  God's. 
Whatever  the  man  might  have  made  himself,  there  still 
remained  the  possibility  of  his  becoming  what  God  had  in- 
tended him  to  be.  And  this  belief  of  the  Divine  possibility 
within  the  depraved  reality  made  Jesus  seek,  that  He 
might  save,  the  lost.  The  goodness  He  incarnated  could 
vanquish  man's  evil,  while  the  evil  could  not  vanquish 
it.  He  had  the  purity  which  could  see  the  best  thmgs  in 
the  worst  man  as  well  as  the  holiest  and  loveliest  things 
in  God ;  and  when  purity  is  hopeful  of  the  impure,  the 
impure  themselves  can  hardly  despair.  And  so  the  hope 
that  lived  in  the  Saviour  was  planted  in  the  lost  ; 
what  He  believed  possible  they  too  came  to  believe,  and 
the  belief  was  at  once  translated  into  sublime  and  singular 
reality — the  lost  were  saved. 

But  the  relation  of  Jesus  to  Righteousness  was  as  per- 
fect as  His  relation  to  God  and  man.  His  moral  ideal  was 
the  highest.  He  lived  to  do  the  will  of  God.  His  beati- 
tudes were  moral,  the  good  was  the  blessed  man.  But  it 
is  significant  that  one  whose  ethical  ideal  was  so  exalted 
had  Himself  no  consciousness  of  sin,  confessed  to  no  sense 
of  guilt,  to  no  failure  in  obedience.  In  one  constituted 
like  Jesus,  to  be  without  the  sense  of  sin  was  to  be  sinless, 
to  be  conscious  of  no  disobedience  was  to  have  always 
obeyed.  And  this  becomes  the  more  evident  when  His 
goodness  is  seen  to  be  spontaneous,  without  effort,  the 
free  and  joyous  outcome  of  a  nature  so  happy  as  to  have 
been  always  holy.  His  calm  and  serene  soul  knew  no 
struggle,  no  conflict  of  the  flesh  and  spirit  such  as  made 
the  experience  of  His  greatest  apostle  so  tragic.    He  knew 


62  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

sorrow,  but  it  was  the  sorrow  of  the  heart  that  weeps  for 
sin,  not  of  the  conscience  that  reproves  it.  And  the 
character  that  expressed  this  spontaneous  obedience  was 
a  harmony  of  blended  opposites.  He  was  so  gentle  as  to 
draw  the  love  and  trust  of  little  children,  as  to  conquer 
the  suspicion  and  fear  the  fallen  ever  feel  towards  the 
holy  ;  but  He  was  so  stern  as  to  rebuke  hypocrisy  in  words 
that  still  burn,  so  strong  as  to  resist  evil  till  it  vanquished 
His  life  in  revenge  for  its  failure  to  vanquish  His  will. 
He  was  "  meek  and  lowly  in  heart,"  had  no  love  for  place 
or  power,  no  lust  of  wealth  or  position,  no  craving  for  the 
fame  that  is  the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds  ;  but  yet  He 
claimed  a  majesty  so  august  that  beside  it  Caesar's  was 
the  merest  mock  royalty.  He  had  singular  independence, 
a  will  so  strong  that  nothing  could  unfix  its  resolution  or 
divert  it  from  its  chosen  path ;  but  yet  He  was  so  depen- 
dent that  in  His  deepest  agony  He  sought  the  sympathy 
and  presence  of  man.  These  features  of  His  character 
are  but  phases  of  His  obedience.  The  principle  that  rules 
Him  is  one,  the  forms  which  express  His  loyalty  to  it  are 
many.  His  nature  is  good,  and  His  goodness  spon- 
taneous, but  it  ever  assumes  the  aspect  appropriate  to  the 
moments  of  His  many-sided  and  significant  life. 

These  phases  and  features  of  His  Personality  emerge  in 
His  teaching,  give  to  it  its  most  distinctive  characteristics. 
His  words  as  to  God  but  express  truths  represented  in  His 
own  relation  to  the  Father.  The  love  from  heaven  that 
filled  and  surrounded  His  soul  became  articulate  in  His 
sayings  and  parables.  What  He  experienced  He  expressed; 
the  God  He  knew  He  made  known;  and  as  we  enter 
into  the  truth  He  embodied  and  revealed,  we  enter  into  a 
relation  to  the  Father  akin  to  His.  And  as  He  thought, 
felt,  and  acted  towards  man,  so  He  taught  concerning  Him. 
His  words  witness  to  His  faith  in  the  Divine  possibilities 
that  still  live  in  the  most  depraved  man,  and  witness,  too, 


HIS  PERSONALITY.  6^ 

to  the  yearning  of  the  Supreme  Goodness  we  call  God 
after  His  broken  and  buried  image.  The  parables  that 
speak  of  the  shepherd  that  seeks  till  He  finds  His  lost 
lamb ;  of  the  woman  that  lights  the  candle  and  searche 
for  the  coin  she  can  ill  spare  ;  of  the  father  who  watches 
for  the  return  of  the  prodigal,  and  receives  him  with 
weeping  joy;  represent  the  Divine  side  of  His  mission, 
the  attitude  of  His  own  unique  Personality  to  the  fallen 
aad  outcast.  And  the  sermons  and  parables  that  enforce 
and  illustrate  the  righteousness  He  loved,  the  virtues  He 
instituted  or  made  possible,  obedience  of  the  one  righteous 
Will,  imitation  of  the  perfect  God,  forgiveness,  prayerful- 
ness,  truthfulness,  purity,  faith,  charity,  love  to  the 
stranger,  sympathy  with  the  suffering,  tenderness  to  the 
fallen,  only  describe  and  enjoin  the  ideals  He  had  realized, 
the  graces  that  were  personalized  in  Him.  He  who  rightly 
apprehends  the  relation  of  the  Personality  to  the  teaching 
of  Christ  will  understand  why  He  was  and  is  "  full  of 
grace  and  truth.*' 


IV. 

THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST. 

Nature  begins  and  perfects  her  finest  works  in  secrecy 
and  silence.  No  eye  has  yet  seen  the  subtle  agents  at 
work  which  weave  for  her  the  rich-coloured  sweet-smelling 
garments  of  summer,  or  strip  her  naked  and  leave  her 
desolate  in  the  cold  and  gloom  of  winter.  No  ear  has 
heard  the  footsteps  or  the  swift-moving  tools  of  the 
mechanics  who  in  her  secret  yet  open  workshop  build 
minute  crystals  or  mighty  mountains,  or  those  varied  and 
wondrous  organisms  that  make  up  our  living  world. 
Nature  is  here  but  the  mirror  or  parable  of  mind  ;  its 
growth  is  a  silent  process,  the  swelling  till  it  bursts  of  the 
bud  under  the  soft  but  potent  pressure  of  forces  that 
struggle  from  without  inwards,  only  that  they  may  the 
more  harmoniously  work  from^  within  outwards.  So  in  a 
pre-eminent  degree  was  it  with  Christ.  We  can  study 
and  describe  His  historical  appearance,  can  analyze  and 
estimate  the  educative  influences  that  surrounded  His 
boyhood  and  youth ;  but  we  cannot  see  the  mysterious 
personal  force  that  at  once  used  and  unified  these  influ- 
ences and  created  that  appearance.  Yet  the  forces  active 
in  the  process  become  manifest  in  the  result,  and  from  it 
we  can  infer  what  kind  of  architects  and  builders  were 
needed  to  plan  and  rear  the  substructure  of  the  splendid 
moral  edifice  that,  as  the  sinless  Man,  commands  humanity. 
What  was  apparent  had  its  source  in  what  was  veiled,  and 
revealed  it,  just  as  the  roots  of  the  glorious  flower  are 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST  65 

bedded  deep  in  the  sapful  soil ;  but  the  thing  of  beauty 
and  of  fragrance  into  which  they  blossom  tells  of  the  won- 
drous alchemy  that  has  in  silence  and  in  darkness  been 
changing  the  juices  of  earth  and  the  sunbeams  of  heaven 
into  an  object  of  sweetness  and  delight. 

The  growth  of  Jesus  was  not  hurried  and  forced,  but 
slow  and  natural.     For  more  than  thirty  years  He  tarried 
at  Nazareth,  waiting  till  His  strength  had  matured  and 
His  manhood  was  complete.     Then  His  hour  was  struck 
in  tones  audible  to  Himself  and  His  people.     The  tongue 
that  told  it  came  from  the  banks  of  the  Jordan  and  the 
waste  places  about  the  Dead  Sea.     There  a  New  Prophet 
had  appeared,  ancient  in  manners  and  spirit,  modern  in 
speech  and  purpose.     No  sleek  scribe,  no  pompous  priest, 
or  courtier  clad  in  soft  raiment  was  he ;  but  a  son  of  the 
desert,  clad  in  garments  of  coarse  camels'  hair,  bound 
round  him  by  a  leathern  girdle,  seeking  his  food  from  the 
rock  where  the  wild  bee  left  its  honey,  and  the  locust 
came — a  man  full  of  the  stern  spirit  of  solitude  and  the 
thoughts  God  speaks  to  the  soul  that  can  dare  to  be  alone. 
He  called  himself  a  Voice,  but  he  was  not  like  the  still 
small  voice  the  Prophet  had  heard  in  his  mountain  cave ; 
he  was  rather  like  the  wind  and  the  fire  that  broke  in 
pieces  the  rocks,  heralds  as  they  were  of  the  low  sweet 
voice  that  was  to  come  out  of  the  silence  they  left.    People 
from  the  banks  of  the  Jordan  crowded  to  hear  him.     His 
fame  reached  Jerusalem,  and   Sadducees  and  Pharisees, 
scribes  and  priests,  publicans  and  sinners,  went  forth  to 
listen,  and  be  awed  into  a  passing  reverence  and  faith. 
West  and  east,  south  and  north,  the  tidings  spread,  reached 
remote  Nazareth,  and  woke  great  emotions  in  the  home  of 
the  Carpenter  there.     He  who  had  become,  since  Joseph 
was  not,  the  head  and  bread-winner  of  the  little  family, 
knew  that  His  hour  was  come,  and  went  forth,  the  son  of 
Joseph,  to  return  the  Messiah  of  God. 


66  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

Now,  this  New  Prophet  is  full  of  the  deepest  and  most 
varied  significance  for  the  history  of  Christ.  He  not  only 
marks  the  moment  of  His  emergence  from  obscurity,  but 
is,  as  it  were,  its  occasional  cause.  The  only  historical 
authority  that  does  not  recognize  this  relation  is  Josephus, 
whose  silence  as  to  Jesus  is  the  most  eloquent  tribute  of 
Jewish  antiquity  to  the  transcendent,  and  to  it  inexplicable, 
importance  of  our  Christ.  Our  other  authorities  show  us 
Jesus  coming,  obscure,  undistinguished,  to  John,  mingling 
with  the  crowds  that  throng  the  banks  of  the  Jordan  ;  but 
when  the  wave  of  excitement  subsides,  John  has  vanished, 
Jesus  alone  stands,  the  end  for  which  the  Baptist  has 
lived,  the  fulfilment  of  his  prophecy  and  completion  of  his 
mission. 

The  Baptist  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  the  minor  cha 
racters  in  either  the  Hebrew  or  Christian  Scriptures.  His 
career  is  short,  and  his  work  transitional,  but  his  influence 
is  at  once  penetrative  and  permanent.  His  ministry  exer- 
cised an  immense  power — made,  while  it  lasted,  Judaea 
contrite  and  earnest,  Galilee  penitent  and  wistful ;  re- 
mained, when  it  had  long  ceased,  a  memory  so  moving, 
as  to  touch  the  courtier  heart  of  Josephus  with  reverence 
and  admiration.  Each  of  our  Gospels  is  a  witness  to  his 
eminence.  Love  of  him  distinguished  alike  Jesus  and  the 
Jews.  To  Jesus  he  was  the  very  greatest  of  the  prophets.^ 
His  name  was  so  potent  as  to  subdue  the  arrogance,  if  it 
did  not  extort  the  respect,  of  the  Pharisees  ;  *  so  noble  as 
to  rouse  and  retain  the  devotion  of  the  crowd.^  So  full 
was  he  of  the  inspiration  of  God,  that  he  not  only  dared  to 
be  a  prophet  in  an  age  of  priestcraft  and  formalism,  but 
even  compelled  it  to  listen  to  him.^  So  possessed  was  he 
of  a  lofty  humility,  that  he  retired  before  a  greater,  proudly 
confessing  that  he  was,  and  had  lived  to  be,  superseded.^ 

'  Matt.  xi.  9-1 1.     *  Matt.  iii.  7  ;  John  i.  19-25.     3  Markxi.  30-32. 
4  Matt  iii.  5.  s  Malt.  iii.  11  ;  John  iii.  27-30. 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  TS^^m^JiST  67 


He  evoked  from  the  Old  Testament  the  spirit  that  in- 
augurated the  New,  and  so  became  the  meeting-point 
of  both,  a  symbol  of  the  dawn,  which  is  at  once  the 
death  of  the  night  and  the  birth  of  the  day.  So  the  man 
and  his  mission  must  be  studied  if  the  Christ  is  to  be 
understood. 

There  is  no  need  to  discuss  here  the  story  of  John's 
birth.  Enough  to  say,  he  sprang  from  an  old  priestly 
stock,  both  parents  being  of  Aaronic  descent.  He  was  a 
child  of  age,  and  there  is  in  age  a  simplicity  that  may 
make  its  home  more  sweetly  child-like  than  the  home  of 
youth.  His  birthplace  was  a  city  in  the  hill  country  of 
Judaea,  possibly  Hebron,  the  old  regal  and  priestly  city  of 
Judah.  There  a  simple  and  sincere  faith  would  live, 
utterly  unlike  the  formal  and  official  religion  that  reigned 
at  Jerusalem.  If  the  father  may  be  interpreted  through 
the  son,  we  can  say  that  Zacharias  was  no  priest  of  the 
Sadducean  type,  apt  at  clothing  secular  ambitions  in 
sacerdotal  forms ;  no  scribe  too  well  skilled  in  tradition 
to  be  familiar  with  the  spirit  and  the  truth  that  lived  in  the 
ancient  Scriptures.  His  son  at  least  was  no  child  of  policy 
and  tradition,  but  of  prophecy  and  freedom.  He  was  not 
trained  in  the  schools  of  his  people.  One  authority^  re- 
presents him  as  passing  his  youth  in  the  desert,  and  his 
speech  seems  to  breathe  its  atmosphere  and  reflect  its 
images — the  stones  that  mocked  the  culture  of  man,  but 
illustrated  the  creative  power  of  God;  the  viper-brood 
curled  and  concealed  among  the  rocks ;  the  olive-trees, 
sending  their  roots  far  into  the  dry  and  stony  soil,  without 
finding  moisture  enough  to  become  fruitful.  His  bearing, 
too,  and  spirit  are  of  the  desert.  He  was  scornful  of 
society,  independent  of  its  companionships  and  comforts  ;  ^ 
was  not  clad  in  soft  raiment,  or  distinguished  by  supple 
and  courtly  grace  ;  was  no  reed  shaken  by  the  wind,  but  a 

*  Luke  i.  80.  "  Luke  vii.  33. 


(58  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

gnarled  oak  the  wind  could  neither  bend  nor  break.*  Yet 
his  solitude  was  society  :  it  enabled  him  to  escape  the 
Rabbis  and  find  the  Prophets.  The  priest  by  birth  became 
a  prophet  by  Divine  nurture,  so  steeped  in  the  thought 
and  speech  of  the  ancient  seers  as  to  seem,  alike  to  the 
faith  and  imagination  of  his  time,  the  greatest  of  them 
resurgent.  He  so  speaks  the  language  of  Isaiah  as  to 
show  who  had  been  the  great  companion  of  his  solitude.* 
His  ideas  of  repentance,  the  kingdom,  judgment,  right- 
eousness, were  prophetic,  not  priestly ;  and  the  emphasis 
with  which  he  declared  himself  a  "  Voice  "  showed  that 
in  him  the  ancient  Nahi^  the  speaker  for  God,  had  revived. 
And  this  prophetic  nurture  and  character  sets  him  in 
radical  antithesis  to  the  ascetic  fraternities  of  his  time. 
He  is  no  Essene — can  be  as  little  relegated  to  an  anchorite 
as  to  a  Pharisaic  order.  He  was  no  selfish  lover  of  his 
own  soul,  too  fearful  of  pollution  to  touch  society,  but  a 
magnanimous  reformer,  great  in  his  love  alike  of  man  and 
of  righteousness.  The  Essene  hated  flesh,  but  John  ate 
without  scruple  the  locust  of  the  desert.  The  ascetic 
communities  were  great  in  ablutions,  but  John  had  only 
his  baptism,  an  ablutionary  rite  but  once  administered,  and 
without  meaning,  save  as  expressive  of  a  moral  change 
and  prophetic  of  the  baptism  of  Him  who  was  to  baptize 
with  the  Holy  Ghost  and  with  fire.  He  did  not  believe  in 
regeneration  by  separation,  in  saving  the  soul  by  forsaking 
the  world.  That  to  him  was  but  a  deeper  loss.  He  be- 
lieved in  a  kingdom  of  heaven  which  was  a  kingdom  on 
earth  and  of  men,  a  society  of  God,  to  be  realized  in  the 
homes  they  had  formed  and  the  cities  they  had  built. 
And  so  he  was  too  much  the  pupil  of  Divine  freedom  and 
discipline  to  be  the  child  of  any  school,  the  spokesman  of 
any  sect.     His  faith  was  the  fruit  of  inspiration  as  opposed 

'  Luke  vii.  24,  25  ;  Matt.  xi.  7. 

»  John  i.  23.     Cf.  Matt.  iii.  3  ;  Mark  i.  2,  3  ;  Luke  iii.  4-6. 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST  69 

to  experience.  Contact  with  hard  human  realities  had 
not  dulled  his  enthusiasm,  or  changed  his  belief  in  the 
practicability  of  the  old  theocratic  ideals  into  a  belief 
in  the  wisdom  and  omnipotence  of  expedierfcy.  His 
education  made  him  a  preacher  who  lived  as  he  believed, 
possessed  of  the  courage  to  summon  men  to  a  like  faith 
and  life. 

Distance  makes  many  things  clear.  The  air  of  the 
desert  was  more  favourable  to  penetrative  spiritual 
vision  than  the  atmosphere  of  the  city.  In  the  desert 
John  came  to  understand  the  past  of  his  people  as  his 
people  did  not,  and  through  it  their  present  needs,  their 
present  duties,  and  the  possibilities  of  their  future. 
He  looked  at  the  men  of  his  age  and  their  needs  through 
his  great  beliefs,  his  exalted  ideas;  and  the  contrast  of 
the  ideal  and  the  possible  with  the  real  and  the  actual 
made  the  student  of  the  desert  into  the  Baptist 
and  Preacher.  Had  Israel  realized  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  ?  Did  the  people  of  God  embody  and  fulfil  His 
righteousness  ?  Were  they  a  society  of  brethren,  dutiful, 
merciful,  kind  ?  Were  they,  by  their  lovely  and  honour- 
able manhood,  making  the  name  of  God  loved  and 
honoured  ?  Were  they  making  His  faith  so  beautiful 
and  glorious  as  to  be  a  joy  and  attraction  to  the 
Gentiles  ?  Nay ;  everywhere  and  in  everything  it  was 
the  reverse.  Israel  seemed  farther  than  ever  from 
realizing  the  visions  that  had  inspired  the  exalted  spirit 
of  the  later  Isaiah ;  the  sins  that  had  so  moved  the  soul 
of  the  earlier  still  lived,  only  in  prouder  and  more 
magnified  forms.  The  *'new  moons,"  the  "Sabbaths," 
the  "  appointed  feasts,"  were  still  celebrated,  the  "  mul- 
titude of  sacrifices,"  the  *'  many  prayers,"  the  '*  incense," 
were  still  offered,  but  less  than  ever  was  the  command 
obeyed,  **  Wash  you,  make  you  clean  ;  put  away  the  evil 
of  your  doings  from  before  mine  eyes ;   cease  to  do  evil ; 


70  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

learn  to  do  well;  seek  judgment,  relieve  the  oppressed, 
judge   the  fatherless,    plead  for  the  widow."  ^ 

With  the  decay  of  prophecy  had  come  the  degeneracy 
of  Israel.  The  priesthood  was  left  free  to  develop  the 
ritual  to  the  injury  of  religion,  the  scribe  to  create 
artificial  sins  and  an  artificial  conscience,  the  passion  for 
ceremonial  purity  which  is  so  fatal  to  the  nobler  and 
more  generous  virtues.  The  Sadducee  said  scornfully, 
*'  The  Pharisees  will  soon  clean  the  face  of  the  sun ;  " 
and  in  his  scorn  he  expressed  this  truth,  that  there  is  no 
surer  sign  of  a  decayed  ethical  and  religious  sense  than 
the  endeavour  to  cleanse  what  is  naturally  pure.  The 
universalism  of  the  prophets  had  been  quenched  by  tlie 
particularism  of  the  priests  ;  the  humanity  of  Hebraism 
had  been  buried  under  the  nationality  of  Judaism.  The 
curse  of  perverted  being  was  on  Israel.  The  law  which 
bound  to  the  service  of  man  was  used  to  create  division 
and  isolation.  Even  within  the  nation  the  spirit  of 
separatism  reigned.  Caste  is  but  a  sacerdotal  trans- 
lated into  a  social  system,  and  is  only  possible  where 
the  accidents  have  been  turned  into  the  essential  quali- 
ties or  elements  of  religion.  The  Pharisee  could  not 
touch  the  publican,  and  be  clean  ;  the  priest  could  not 
help  the  Samaritan,  and  be  holy.  To  be  one  of  "  the 
lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel  "  was  to  be  an  outcast, 
and  an  outcast  is  worse  than  a  heathen.  Hillel  might  say,^ 
"  Belong  to  the  disciples  of  Aaron  (the  meek) ;  love 
peace  and  seek  after  it;  love  mankind  and  bring  them 
to  the  law;"  but  the  people,  with  the  fanaticism  of  the 
letter,  without  the  enthusiasm  of  the  spirit,  believed  in 
the  divinity  of  custom  and  obeyed  it. 

Now  John  emerges  from  his  solitude,  no  Priest  or 
Rabbi,  but  a  Prophet,  with  a  consciousness  of  authority 

*  Isaiah  i.  i6,  17. 

•  Pirke  Aboth,  i.  12-14.     Cf.  Delitzsch,  Jesus  u?td  Hillel,  pp.  17,  ff. 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST,  71 

so  clear  and  intense  as  to  disdain  expression.  There 
is,  indeed,  in  the  man  a  wonderful  self-abnegation.  He 
never  speaks  of  his  own  claims,  only  delivers  his  destined 
message.  He  is  but  a  "  Voice  ;  "  the  word  it  utt-ers  alone 
deserves  thought  and  demands  faith.  When  the  people 
— anxiously  curious,  prepared  to  believe  almost  anything 
as  to  the  new  preacher  —  inquire,  "  Who  is  he  ?  the 
Messias  ?  Elias  ?  the  prophet  like  to  Moses  ?  "  he  has 
but  one  answer,  "  I  am  not.*  What  I  am  matters  nothing; 
what  I  say  is  matter  enough."  ^  But  this  silence  as  to 
himself  is  eloquent  as  to  his  greatness.  The  man  who  is, 
as  it  were,  annihilated  by  his  mission,  is  most  magnified 
by  it ;  he  becomes  an  organ  of  Deity,  a  voice  of  God, 
altogether  silent  as  to  his  own  claims,  concerned  only 
with  God's.  He  who  is  so  divinely  possessed  is  insensible 
to  the  strength  of  the  resistent  forces,  does  his  work  by 
a  kind  of  inspired  necessity,  and  once  it  is  done  is  content 
to  die,  or  be  forgotten — to  decrease,  that  a  greater  may 
increase. 

In  this  New  Prophet,  so  divinely  unconscious  of  him- 
self, so  divinely  conscious  of  his  mission,  there  revived 
the  ancient  conflict  of  his  order  against  the  ritualism 
of  the  Temple  and  the  legalism  of  the  Schools.  He 
was  a  sort  of  personified  revolt  against  the  law,  written 
and  oral.  The  image  and  authority  of  Moses  do  not 
seem  to  exist  for  him ;  but  the  prophets,  with  their 
scorn  of  legal  pride  and  privilege,  ceremonial  purity 
and  observances,  with  their  faith  in  the  reality  of 
righteousness  and  retribution,  are  so  real  to  him,  that 
he  appears  the  very  incarnation  of  their  spirit,  the 
embodied  voice  of  their  God.  Hence  his  message  is 
moral,  not  political.  His  relation  to  the  Roman  cannot 
be  directly  determined ;  his  relation  to  the  Jew  is  ap- 
parent enough.  He  does  not  think  that  Judaism  is 
'  John  i.  19-23. 


72  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  religion  of  Jahveh,  or  that  Israel  needs  only  freedom 
to  be  perfect.  He  can  hardly  be  named  a  patriotic  Jew ; 
that  is,  if  patriotism  be  fidelity  to  what  his  country- 
men passionately  revere.  To  him  their  national  idea  is 
abhorrent,  and  the  attempts  at  realization  but  prove  its 
evil.  He  thinks  that  people  and  rulers  are  alike  guilty, 
that  their  supreme  need  is  repentance,  and  the  regenera- 
tion repentance  alone  can  bring.  The  priest  and  the 
scribe  had  made  the  people  of"  God  the  people  of  form 
and  privilege ;  the  prophet  appears  that  he  may  command 
the  people  of  form  and  privilege  to  become  the  people  of 
God.  National  was  possible  only  through  individual 
regeneration.  The  mass  could  be  made  holy  only  by 
the  units  becoming  holy.  And  the  change  must  be 
immediate.  The  God  who  had  borne  so  long  with  their 
evil  would  bear  no  longer.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  was  at 
hand  ;  ^  its  dawn  stood  tip-toe  on  the  mountain  top.  And 
the  King  was  a  Judge,  coming  to  do  His  own  will,  not 
the  will  of  the  Jews.  What  He  needed  was  a  prepared 
people ;  what  He  would  find  was  a  brood  of  vipers.  To 
Him  purity  of  blood  was  nothing,  purity  of  heart  alone 
was  good.  He  was  coming,  fan  in  hand,  to  divide  the 
chaff  from  the  wheat,  to  gather  the  one  into  His  garner, 
to  burn  up  the  other  with  unquenchable  fire. 

John's  spirit  was  thus  essentially  ethical,  and  his  atti- 
tude one  of  essential  antagonism  to  the  unethical  spirit  of 
Judaism.  The  people,  so  far  from  realizing,  had  corrupted 
the  theocratic  ideal,  and  had,  in  depraving  it,  depraved 
themselves.  Hence  his  preaching  had  in  its  earliest  form 
a  twofold  character,  a  minatory  and  a  hortatory,  threatened 
with  punishment,  and  exhorted  to  repentance.  "  The  axe 
was  laid  to  the  root  of  the  tree,  and  the  tree  must  either 
become  fruitful  or  be  hewn  down."  ^  But  his  general 
principles  received  most  particular  and  direct  application. 
*  Luke  iii.  7-9  ;  Matt.  iii.  10.     ="  Luke  iii.  7-9  ;  Matt.  iii.  lo. 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST,  73 

To  the  Sadducees  and  Pharisees,  the  priests  and  teachers 
of  the  people,  responsible  in  the  most  eminent  degree  for 
the  worship  and  faith,  manners  and  laws,  of  the  nation, 
his  speech  was  plain  and  severe.  They  were  a  ^'  genera- 
tion of  vipers,"  seeking  his  baptism  in  the  hope  of  escaping 
**  the  wrath  to  come."  They  were  foolishly  proud  of 
their  Abrahamic  descent,  but  were  warned  not  to  trust  it. 
God  was  able,  out  of  the  dry  stones  of  the  desert,  "  to 
raise  up  children  unto  Abraham."  '  The  advice  was 
unsought,  and  the  warning  was  unheeded.  But  the  people 
were  more  tractable  than  their  priests  and  rabbis.  They 
asked  the  stern  preacher,  "  What  shall  we  do  ?  "  ^  and  the 
answer,  so  needed  by  a  broken  and  divided  nation,  was, 
"  He  that  hath  two  coats,  let  him  impart  to  him  that 
none ;  and  he  that  hath  meat,  let  him  do  likewise."  To 
the  publicans,  who  answered  exclusion  by  extortion,  he 
said,  "  Exact  no  more  than  what  is  due ; "  to  the  soldiers, 
*'  Do  violence  to  no  man;  accuse  none  falsely,  and  be 
content  with  your  pay."  These  were  words  that  became 
a  prophet — echoes  of  those  spoken  long  before.  "  Is  not 
this  the  fast  that  I  have  chosen  ?  to  loose  the  bands  of 
wickedness,  to  undo  the  heavy  burdens,  and  to  let  the 
oppressed  go  free,  and  that  ye  break  every  yoke?  Is  it 
not  to  deal  thy  bread  to  the  hungry,  and  that  thou  bring 
the  poor  that  are  cast  out  to  thy  house  ?  when  thou  seest 
the  naked,  that  thou  cover  him  ;  and  that  thou  hide  not 
thyself  from  thine  own  flesh  ?  "  3 

But  John  was  not  satisfied  with  a  preaching  that  was 
simply  minatory  and  hortatory  :  he  determined  to  insti- 
tute a  society  of  the  penitent  and  reformed.  It  was  but 
according  to  Oriental  ideas  that  entrance  into  the  society 
should  be  signified  by  a  symbol.  Hence  the  command  to 
repent  was  supplemented  by  the  command  to  be  baptized. 

«  Matt.  iii.  7-9.  "  Luke  iii.  10-14. 

3  Isaiah  Iviii.  6,  7. 


74  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

If  in  his  preaching  he  far  transcended  Judaism,  in  his 
baptism  he  proved  himself  a  true  child  of  Judaea,  a 
believer  in  the  Divine  worth  and  significance  of  symbols. 
The  symbol  must  be  interpreted  by  the  circle  of  ideas  in 
v^hich  he  moved  and  which  he  variously  expressed.  Its 
suggestive  cause  is  as  hard  to  determine  as  it  is  unim- 
portant.  The  rite  may  have  formal  affinities  with  the 
lustrations  of  the  Essenes  or  the  ablutions  of  proselytes, 
but  it  has  a  material  significance  of  his  own.  John  placed 
it  in  a  relation  with  confession  of  sin  and  repentance  that 
made  it  the  symbol  of  certain  spiritual  realities — evil 
recognized  and  repudiated,  good  perceived  and  chosen. 
In  this  connection  its  use  may  have  been  suggested  by 
such  words  as,  "  Wash  you,  make  you  clean  ; " '  or, 
"  In  that  day  there  shall  be  a  fountain  opened  to  the 
house  of  David  and  to  the  inhabitants  of  Jerusalem  for 
sin  and  for  uncleanness."  ^  But  his  baptism  was  a 
symbol  of  another  and  no  less  significant  fact ;  the  bap- 
tized were  not  simply  the  penitent,  but  the  expectant, 
men  consecrated  to  a  great  hope.  They  formed  a 
community  that  had  renounced  with  their  sins  the 
older  Judaism,  with  its  civil  kingdom  and  political  Mes- 
siah, and  stood  expectant,  waiting  the  coming  of  Him 
who  was  to  baptize  with  the  Holy  Ghost  and  with  fire. 
Under  this  aspect  his  baptism  had  affinities  with  events 
and  customs  dear  to  the  Hebrew.  When  Moses  descended 
from  the  mount  to  sanctify  the  people,  he  made  them 
*'wash  their  clothes."  ^  When  the  Gentile  became  a  Jew 
he  was  purified  by  water.  What  is  to  us  a  sensuous 
symbol  was  to  him  a  translucent  form  of  an  eternal  truth. 
What  he  always  loved  he  loved  most  of  all  when  it  had 
a  national  significance,  expressed  some  truth  as  to  the 
relation  of  the  people  and  their  God.  And  so  John  was 
but  true  to  the  best  genius  of  his  people  when  he  made 
*  Isaiah  i.  i6.  ""  Zech.  xiii.  i.        3  Exod.  xix.  ia-14. 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST,  75 

his  baptism  represent,  not  simply  an  individual  change, 
but  a  social  fact — entrance  into  a  society  prepared  for  the 
kingdom  which  was  at  hand.  The  "  baptism  unto  repent- 
ance" was  also  a  baptism  unto  hope  :  as  the  first,  it  was 
the  sign  of  a  renounced  past,  as  the  second,  it  was  the 
symbol'  of  a  new  future.^ 

The  Baptist's  idea  of  this  new  future  was  embodied  in 
the  phrase  "  the  kingdom  of  heaven.*'  This  kingdom  he 
interpreted  in  the  prophetic  sense  as  the  realized  reign  of 
the  righteous  God.  It  was  because  his  conception  of  the 
kingdom  was  so  ethical  that  his  condemnation  of  unethical 
Judaism  was  so  vehement  and  unsparing.  He  believed 
that  a  Divine  society  could  be  constituted  only  by  men 
who  were  penetrated  and  possessed  by  the  Divine.  So 
his  cry  to  his  evil  generation  was,  "Confess  your  sins, 
repent,  be  baptized  ;  and,  so  prepared,  await  the  coming 
of  the  day  whose  dawn  we  see."  But  the  Kingdom 
implied  a  King.  The  prophets  when  they  dreamed  of  the 
golden  age  dreamed  of  it  as  instituted  by  a  Divine  Prince, 
a  Messiah.  In  the  Messiah  the  hopes  of  Hebraism  culmi- 
nated ;  for  Him  it  had  lived,  without  Him  its  faith  had 
died.  In  the  days  of  a  wicked  tyranny,  men  could  not 
have  believed  in  the  eternal  righteousness  unless  they  had 
at  the  same  time  believed  in  a  day  of  victory  and  retri- 
bution. To  the  prophet  the  present  might  be  man's,  but 
the  future  was  God's  ;  in  it  He  would  see  that  right 
veigned  and  good  triumphed.  The  Messiah  personified  to 
the  prophetic  spirit  the  Divine  judgment  against  wrong 
and  vindication  of  right ;  He  was  to  live  to  do  the  will  of 
God,  and  cause  it  to  be  done.  The  ideas  of  the  king  and 
the  kingdom,  thus  inseparably  blended  in  prophecy, 
appeared  as  indissolubly  connected  in  the  mind  of  John. 
He  could  indifferently  say,  "  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at 

*  In  the  interpretation  of  John's  baptism  the  words  of  Josephus 
{Antic.,  bk.  xviii.  c.  v.  §  2)  are  of  great  importance. 


76  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

hand ;  '*  and,  "  After  me  cometh  one  mightier  than  I." ' 
He  loved,  indeed,  to  contrast  his  own  meanness  and  the 
King's  greatness.  He  was  not  worthy  to  bear  His  sandals, 
to  loose  His  shoe's  latchet.  He  was  but  the  friend  of  the 
Bridegroom  :  the  Bridegroom  was  to  come.  He  only- 
baptized  with  water,  the  mighty  One  who  was  coming 
would  "  baptize  with  the  Holy  Ghost  and  with  fire."  He 
was  but  a  preacher,  only  a  "  Voice."  He  whose  foot  was 
on  the  threshold  was  a  Divider,  wielding  a  winnowing  fan. 
He  himself  could  but  urge  men  to  flee  from  wrath  and 
seek  life ;  but  the  King,  at  once  a  Saviour  and  Judge,  was 
able  "to  gather  the  wheat  into  his  garner,  to  burn  the 
chaff  with  unquenchable  fire."  *  The  preaching  of  John 
was  thus  essentially  concerned  with  the  coming  of  a 
Person  :  the  King  made  the  kingdom.  Without  Him  it 
could  not  be  :  with  Him  it  was  a  necessity.  In  His 
prophetic  word  ancient  prophecy  lived  again,  and  waited 
to  welcome  Him  who  was  to  fulfil  its  hopes  and  realize 
its  truths. 

The  Great  Prophet  did  not  prophesy  in  vain.  He 
moved  Israel  as  Israel  had  not  been  moved  for  centuries. 
New  hopes,  new  fears,  awoke  in  Judsea.  The  people  be- 
came conscious  of  sin,  conscious  of  their  failure  to  be  the 
people  of  God.  The  voice  from  the  banks  of  the  Jordan 
awed  the  heart  of  Jerusalem,  and  stilled  the  conflicts  of 
priests  and  scribes.  For  one  splendid  moment  the  nation 
awoke  to  the  meaning  of  its  singular  and  sublime  faith, 
forgot  its  struggles  against  the  eagles  and  images  of  Caesar 
in  its  consciousness  of  the  reign  and  righteousness  of  God. 
Crowds  from  the  cities  and  villages,  from  Judsea  and 
Galilee,  Persea  and  the  land  east  of  the  Jordan,  Pharisees 
and  Sadducees,  priests  and  Levites,  scribes  and  elders  of 
the  people,   publicans  and  proselytes,  warriors  from  the 

«  Matt.  iii.  2  ;  Mark  i.  7. 

*  Matt.  iii.  11,  12  ;   Luke  iii.  16,  17  ;  John  i.  27,  iii.  29. 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST.  77 

Roman  and  Herodian  armies,  came  to  hear  the  prophet, 
to  confess  their  old  sins,  and  be  baptized  into  his  new  life. 
And  with  a  band  from  distant  Nazareth  came  one  who 
had  hitherto  been  known  as  Jesus  the  carpenter,' who  was 
henceforth  to  be  known  as  Jesus  the  Christ.  How  He  was 
touched  by  the  multitude,  by  the  preacher,  by  the  sense  of 
sin  that  had  seized  the  people,  by  the  hope  that  was  ex- 
pressed in  the  baptism,  we  do  not  know.  We  only  know 
that  here  He  becomes  conscious  that  His  hour  had  come, 
that  His  happy  obscurity  must  end,  His  mission  of  sorrow 
and  glory,  death  and  life,  begin.  What  was  certain  to 
Himself  was  no  less  evident  to  John.  Apparently  they 
had  never  met  before  ;  but  to  two  such  spirits,  to  meet 
once  at  such  a  time  and  place  was  enough.  Outwardly 
the  two  were  most  unlike.  The  son  of  the  priest  was  in 
all  things  singular,  in  home,  in  dress,  in  food,  in  speech, 
a  man  of  weird  aspect,  of  spirit  that  disdained  the  common 
ways  and  life  of  man.  The  Child  of  the  carpenter  was,  if 
not  undistinguished,  inconspicuous,  familiar  with  society, 
the  city,  the  home  and  his  duties  to  it,  the  weariness  and 
the  tameness  of  common  earth  and  common  day.  Yet 
the  accidents  of  their  respective  aspects  could  not  hide  the 
Prophet  and  the  King  from  each  other.  Spirit  answered 
to  spirit,  and  in  the  answer  the  revelation  came.  The 
hour  of  recognition  might  be  brief,  but  it  was  in  its  mean- 
ing and  issues  eternal.  Months  after,  John  in  Machaerus, 
a  prisoner,  living  by  the  grace  of  a  lustful  tyrant,  at  the 
mercy  of  a  cruel  and  vengeful  woman,  compared  his  ideal 
and  hope  of  the  King  with  the  gentle  and  peaceful 
Teacher  who  lived  so  humbly  in  Galilee  ;  and  clinging  to 
his  earlier  faith  as  diviner  than  the  Divine  reality,  fearing 
that  his  inspiration  had  been  but  illusion,  he  sent  to  ask, 
**  Art  thou  he  that  should  come,  or  do  we  look  for  an- 
other ?"  '  About  the  same  time  the  scene  on  the  banks  of 
*  Matt.  xi.  2,  3  ;  Luke  vii.  19,  20. 


78  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

the  Jordan  rose  before  the  imagination  of  Jesus — the 
curious  crowds  streaming  out  to  see  and  hear  the  prophet, 
the  reeds  by  the  river  side  bending  before  the  wind,  the 
great  prophet  unbent,  inflexible,  speaking  the  word  God 
gave  him ;  and  as  He  compared  the  man  and  work.  He 
declared  him  the  greatest  of  prophets,^  the  one  who  not 
only  prophesied  the  coming  of  the  King,  but  had  proclaimed 
Him  come.  The  contrast  is  significant.  Jesus  did  not 
altogether  fulfil  John's  ideal,  but  the  very  degree  in  which 
our  Christ  differed  from  his  King  makes  his  recognition 
the  more  prophetic,  less  the  fruit  of  design,  more  the  child 
of  inspiration.  What  the  Baptist  in  that  hour  discovered 
and  declared  the  experience  of  eighteen  centuries  has  but 
confirmed. 

The  recognition  over,  the  baptism  ended,  Jesus  retired 
to  the  wilderness,  full  of  the  great  consciousness  that 
involved  His  conflict  with  the  devil ;  but  John  remained 
by  the  Jordan,  to  fulfil  his  now  almost  completed  mission. 
The  meeting  with  Jesus  seems  to  have  worked  a  great 
change  in  the  mind  and  speech  of  the  Baptist.  His 
preaching  appears  to  have  become  less  predictive  and  more 
declarative — less  prophetic  of  Him  who  was  to  come,  and 
more  indicative  of  Him  who  had.  So  much  at  least 
seems  to  be  involved  in  the  deputation  from  Jerusalem.* 
They  do  not  go,  like  those  mentioned  in  the  older  narra- 
tives,3  to  his  baptism,  but  to  ask,  "  Art  thou  the  Christ  ? 
Elias  ?  that  prophet  ?  *'  The  problem  has  now  changed 
— is  not.  What  mean  his  confession,  repentance,  baptism? 
but,  Who  is  he  ?  What  means  his  saying  about  the  Christ 
who  is  come  ?  Men  are  eager,  not  to  show  their  penitence 
and  share  his  hope,  but  to  possess  his  knowledge  and  dis- 
cover his  Messiah.  And  within  this  change  there  is 
another,  still  more  significant.    His  preaching  has  become 

*  Matt.  xi.  7,  14  ;  Luke  vii.  24-29.  *  John  i.  19-24. 

3  Matt.  iii.  7. 


THE  BAPTIST  AND  THE  CHRIST.  79 

sweeter  in  tone,  softer  in  spirit,  materially  unlike  what  it 

had   been.     He   does  not   now   speak   of  the  unsparing 

Judge,  axe  or  fan  in  hand,  hewing  down  the  fruitless  trees, 

burning  the  vacant  chaff;  but  of  the   "  Lamb,  of  God," 

devoted    to   meek   silence    and    sacrifice.      He   does   not 

threaten  the  multitudes  with  an  avenger  of  sin,  but  points 

to  One  **  who  bears  the  sin  of  the  world."    The  Synoptists 

show  the  Baptist  before  he  saw  Christ  and  when  he  first 

saw  Him  ;  but  the  Fourth  Gospel  shows  him  after  he  had 

known  Christ,  changed  into  a  meeker,  sweeter,  nobler  man, 

softer  in  speech  and  in  spirit,  with  a  diviner  notion  of  the 

Messiah,  a  more  hopeful  and  helpful  word  for  man.     And 

so,  when  the  Christ  returned  victorious  from  the  conflict, 

the  preacher  beside  the  Jordan  hailed  Him,  not  as  He  of  the 

winnowing  fan,  but  as  "the  Lamb  of  God,"  and  turned 

the  eyes  of  the  crowds  his  voice  still  held  together  to  One 

who  stood    among   them,  who  had  come  to  declare  the 

Father  and   bear   the  sin  of  man.     And  the    new  faith 

mellowed  the  great  preacher,  made  him  feel  that  his  work 

was  done,  that  it  was  a  glory  to  be  so  superseded  and 

eclipsed,  and  so  enabled  him  to  make  his  last  his  most 

beautiful  words  :  *'  Ye  yourselves  bear  me  witness,  that  I 

said,  I  am  not  the  Christ ;  but  that  I  am  sent  before  him. 

He  that  hath  the  bride  is  the  bridegroom  :  but  the  friend 

of  the  bridegroom,  who  standeth  and  heareth  him,  rejoiceth 

greatly  because  of  the  bridegroom's  voice  :  this  my  joy 

therefore   is   fulfilled.     He   must   increase,   but   I    must 

decrease,* 

» John  iii.  28-30. 


V. 

THE    TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST} 

How  is  the  Temptation  of  Christ  to  be  understood  ?  As  a 
history,  a  parable,  a  myth,  or  an  undesigned,  though  not 
accidental,  compound  of  the  three  ?  If  real,  was  its  reality 
actual,  a  veritable  face4o-face  struggle  of  opposed  persons, 
with  personalities  no  less  real  that  they  represented  uni- 
versal interests,  and,  by  their  conflict,  determined  universal 
issues?  Or  was  its  reality  ideal,  subjective,  a  contest  of 
rival  passions,  principles,  and  aims  ?  If  not  real,  whence 
came  the  narrative?  From  Jesus  or  His  disciples,  or,  in 
a  manner  more  or  less  unconscious,  partly  from  both  ? 
Did  He  clothe  a  general  truth  or  a  mental  experience  in 
the  drapery  of  historical  narrative  ?  Or  did  they  mistake 
a  parable  for  history  ?  Or,  with  imaginations  dazzled  by 
His  person  and  transfigured  by  His  words  and  works,  did 
they  either  simply  create  or  expand  from  a  small  germ 
this,  while  mythical,  symbolical  and  ideally  true  tale  of 
the  struggle  of  celestial  light  and  strength  with  infernal 
darkness  and  subtlety  ? 

These  questions  confront  us  the  moment  we  attempt 
to  understand  the  story  of  the  Temptation.  It  has  been 
interpreted  by  a  rigid  realism,  which,  unable  to  conceive 
any  except  a  formal  and  apparent  reality,  has  bravely 
embodied  the  Devil,  and  introduced  him,  now  as  a  vener- 
able sage,  now  as  a  friend,  and  again  as  a  member  of  the 
Sanhedrin,  or  a  high  priest ;  or,  as  Bengel  naively  thinks, 
«  Matt.  iv.  i-ii  ;  Mark  i.  12,  13;  Luke  iv.  1-13. 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST.  8i 

"  Sub  schemate  f^paiJLiiaTe(D<^f  quia  to  'yi'ypaiTTai  ei  ter  op- 
ponitur."  Since  Origen,  an  idealism,  more  or  less  free, 
has  resolved  the  Temptation,  either  in  whole  or  in  part, 
into  a  vision,  now  caused  by  the  Devil,  now  by.-God,  and 
now  by  the  ecstatic  state  of  Christ's  own  spirit.  Within 
our  own  century  Schleiermacher  has  explained  it  as  a  mis- 
understood parable;  Strauss,  as  a  pure  myth;  De  Wette, 
as  the  expansion  of  an  historical  germ ;  and  subsequent 
scholars  have  variously  combined  these  with  each  other 
or  with  the  older  views.  If  variously  interpreted  means 
well  interpreted,  then  certainly  our  narrative  may  be  said 
to  stand  here  pre-eminent.  But,  at  least,  the  variety  in- 
dicates the  strength  of  the  desire  and  the  determination 
to  understand  it,  and  of  the  belief  that  within  it  are  truths 
worth  knowing,  and  certain,  when  known,  to  increase  our 
knowledge  of  Christ. 

To  discuss  the  many  critical  and  exegetical  problems 
involved  in  the  questions  just  stated,  is,  for  our  present 
purpose,  unnecessary.  Our  design  is  rather  to  approach 
the  subject  from  what  may  be  termed  the  personal  or 
biographical  side,  and  from  the  standpoint  thus  gained 
make  an  attempt  to  understand  the  narrative. 

Let  us  begin,  then,  with  what  ought  to  be  a  self-evident 
proposition.  As  Jesus  was  a  moral  being,  whose  nature 
had  to  develop  under  the  limitations  necessary  to  humanity, 
we  must  conceive  Him  as  a  subject  of  moral  probation. 
He  could  not  escape  exposure  to  its  perils.  "  It  behoved 
him  in  all  things  to  be  like  unto  his  brethren,"  ^  and  so 
to  be  "in  all  things  tempted  as  they  are."  ^  He  obeyed 
by  choice,  not  by  necessity;  His  obedience  was  conscious 
and  voluntary,  not  instinctive  and  natural.  It  might  be 
from  the  first  and  at  every  moment  certain  that  He  would 
achieve  holiness,  but  could  never  be  necessary.  He  could 
have  been  above  the  possibility  of  doing  wrong  only  by 
»  Heb.  ii.  17.  '  Heb.  iv.  15. 


82  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIEE  OF  CHRIST, 

being  without  the  ability  to  do  right.  Obedience  can  be 
where  disobedience  may  be,  and  nowhere  else.  God  is  too 
high  to  be  tempted.  He  neither  obeys  nor  disobeys,  but 
acts  wisely  or  righteously.  We  cannot  say,  "  He  is  sin- 
less; "  must  say,  "  He  is  holy."  We  speak  of  Him  in  words 
that  imply  He  cannot  err  or  fall,  not  in  words  that  imply 
He  may.  A  brute  may  be  provoked,  but  cannot  be 
tempted.  It  is  too  low,  is  beneath  temptation,  and  so  we 
think  of  it  as  neither  sinful,  nor  sinless,  nor  holy,  but 
simply  as  natural — an  unmoral  creature.  But  man  can  be 
tempted,  is  a  being  capable  of  obedience,  capable  of  dis- 
obedience, limited  in  knowledge,  free  in  will.  And  Jesus 
as  Son  of  Man  was  the  true  child  of  humanity,  an  universal 
ideal  man,  wanting  in  no  quality  essential  to  manhood. 
He  had  a  free  will,  an  intellect  which  grew  in  capacity 
and  culture,  knowledge  now  more,  now  less,  imperfect. 
Limitation,  Leibnitz  notwithstanding,  is  no  physical  evil, 
and  imperfection  no  moral  wrong,  but  they  involve  possible 
error  in  thought  and  possible  sin  in  action.  Hence  Jesus 
was,  by  the  very  terms  of  His  being,  temptable.  Where 
life  is  realized  within  the  conditions  of  humanity  there 
must  be  probation,  and  probation  is  only  possible  in  a 
person  who  can  be  proved. 

But  again :  we  must  here  conceive  the  temptable  as 
the  tempted.  In  the  person  and  life  of  Jesus  there  was 
no  seeming.  A  drama  where  the  face  within  the  mask 
is  placid,  where  the  voice  is  outside  the  soul,  where  the 
person  but  personates  an  idea,  is  not  to  be  here  thought  of. 
Now  a  real  humanity  cannot  escape  with  a  fictitious  temp- 
tation. Where  sin  is  universal,  it  cannot  but  be  a  greater 
and  subtler  force  than  were  it  embodied  in  a  single  being, 
more  difficult  to  detect,  less  easy  to  resist.  Every  man 
becomes  then,  in  a  sense,  an  agent — one  in  whom  it  has 
a  foothold  and  through  whom  it  works.  Hence  Christ's 
struggle  against  sin  could  not  but  be  persistent ;  the  battle 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST,  83 

extended  along  the  whole  line  of  His  life,  and  became  a 
victory  only  by  His  death.  And  so,  though  our  narrative 
may  be  termed  by  pre-eminence  The  Temptation,  it  was 
not  simply  then,  but  always,  that  Jesus  was  tempted.  The 
devil  left  Him  only  '*  for  a  season;"  returned  personified 
now  as  Peter,  now  as  Judas,  and  again  as  the  Jews;  met 
Him  amid  the  solitude  and  agony  of  Gethsemane,  in  the 
clamour,  mockery,  and  desertion  of  the  cross.  And  so 
Milton's  grand  picture  of  the  "  patient  Son  of  God  "  re- 
presents, not  one  moment,  but  every  moment,  in  His 
glorious  but  perilous  career  : 

Infernal  hosts  and  hellish  furies  round 

Environed  Thee.     Some  howled,  some  yelled,  some  shrieked, 

Some  bent  at  Thee  their  fiery  darts,  while  Thou 

Satt'st  unappalled  in  calm  and  sinless  peace. 

But  this  very  word  "  sinless  "  starts  another  set  of  ques- 
tions. How  could  Jesus  be  "  tempted  in  all  things,  like  as 
we  are,  yet  without  sin  "  ?  Is  not  temptation  evil  ?  Can 
a  tempted  soul  be  still  a  sinless  soul  ?  If  a  man  becomes 
conscious  of  sin,  though  only  to  resist  it,  does  he  not  lose 
the  beautiful  innocence,  the  white  and  sweet  simplicity  of 
spirit,  that  is,  as  it  were,  the  heart  of  holiness  ?  We  must 
then  consider  how  the  tempted  could  be  the  sinless  Christ. 
And— 

I.  What  is  Temptation  ?  Seduction  to  evil,  solicitation 
to  wrong.  It  stands  distinguished  from  trial  thus  :  trial 
tests,  seeks  to  discover  the  man's  moral  qualities  or  cha- 
racter; but  temptation  persuades  to  evil,  deludes,  that  it 
may  ruin.  The  one  means  to  undeceive,  the  other  to 
deceive.  The  one  aims  at  the  man's  good,  making  him 
conscious  of  his  true  moral  self;  but  the  other  at  his  evil, 
leading  him  more  or  less  unconsciously  into  sin.  God 
tries  ;  Satan  tempts.  Abraham  was  tried  when  his  faith 
was  proved,  Job  when  successive  calamities  made  it  mani- 
fest that  he  served  God  for  nothing  save  the  duty  of  the 


84  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

service  and  the  glory  of  the  Served;  but  Eve  was  tempted 
when  persuaded  to  sin  by  the  promise  of  becoming  a  god ; 
David  when,  bHnded  and  enticed  by  lustful  desire,  he 
plunged  into  the  crimes  that  were  so  terribly  punished  and 
so  grandly  confessed  and  lamented.  And  so  here  emerges 
another  distinction — in  trial  the  issues  are  made  fairly 
apparent,  in  temptation  they  are  concealed.  Evil  in  the 
one  case  is,  in  the  other  is  not,  disguised.  The  wrong 
seems  to  the  tempted  the  desirable,  and  the  extent  to 
which  the  desirable  hides  the  wrong  measures  the  strength 
of  the  temptation.  And  so  there  needs  to  be  adaptation 
between  means  and  end.  What  tempts  one  mind  may 
only  offend  another.  Some  men  are  too  coarse  to  perceive 
the  finer  forms  of  evil ;  others  so  refined  as  to  be  shocked 
by  the  grosser  sins.  Mephistopheles  is  one  being  to  Faust, 
another  to  Margaret,  and  even  to  the  Scholar  he  is  in- 
flexibly accommodating,  full  of  changes  to  suit  the  many 
phases  of  the  mind  he  leads.  And  so  the  tempted  is  the 
solicited  to  evil  by  evil,  but  by  evil  so  disguised  as  to  be 
winsome,  as,  if  possible,  to  make  desire  victorious  over 
conscience  and  will. 

2.  The  Forms  of  Temptation.  It  may  be  either  sen- 
suous, imaginative,  or  rational,  i.e.^  a  man  may  be  tempted 
through  the  senses,  the  imagination,  or  the  reason.  If 
through  the  senses,  then  it  appeals  to  greed,  appetite,  lust, 
or  any  one  of  the  passions  that  bestialize  man  and  create 
our  grosser  miseries  and  crimes.  If  through  the  imagina- 
tion, then  it  dazzles  to  betray,  comes  as  pride,  ambition, 
or  any  one  of  the  graceful  and  gracious  forms  that  can  be 
made  to  veil  vainglorious,  though  Protean,  egotism.  If 
through  the  reason,  then  it  comes  as  doubt  of  the  true, 
suspicion  of  the  good,  or  in  any  of  the  many  forms  in  which 
intellect  protests  against  the  limits  it  so  wishes,  and  yet 
is  so  little  able,  to  transcend.  Temptation  may  thus 
assume  shapes  akin  to  the  highest  as  to  the  lowest  in  man, 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST  85 

but  the  forms  most  distinct  often  subtly  meet  and  blend. 
Perhaps  it  is  never  so  powerful  as  when  its  forces  approach 
the  mind  together  and  at  once  through  the  senses,  the 
imagination,  and  the  reason. 

3.  The  Sources  of  Temptation.  It  may  proceed  either 
(i)  from  self,  or  (2)  from  without  self.  If  the  first,  the 
nature  must  be  bad,  but  not  of  necessity  radically  bad ;  if 
the  second,  it  may  be  innocent,  but  must  be  capable  of 
sinning  and  being  induced,  or  drawn,  to  a  given  sin.  A 
thoroughly  bad  being  may  tempt,  but  cannot  be  tempted. 
The  nature  has  become  essentially  evil,  and  so  sin  is 
natural.  A  sinless  being  may  be  tempted,  but  cannot 
tempt — even  himself.  Where  inclination  and  will,  con- 
science and  passion,  are  in  harmony,  there  can  be  no  lust 
to  entice  or  evil  tendency  to  beset  and  ensnare.  A  being 
of  mixed  qualities  and  character  can  both  tempt  and  be 
tempted,  his  baser  can  tempt  his  better  nature,  a  worse 
creature  can  seduce  him  to  deeper  sin. 

Now  it  is  evident  that  temptation  from  within  is  a  con- 
fession of  sinfulness,  the  endeavour  of  depravity  to  become 
still  more  depraved.  The  self-tempted  can  never  be  the 
sinless.  Tendencies  that  solicit  to  evil  are  evil  tendencies. 
The  Hunchback  King,  as  conceived  by  Shakespeare  and 
represented  in  the  most  tragic  of  his  historical  plays,  is  a 
man  drunk  with  ambition,  made  by  it  false,  perfidious, 
cruel.  He  knew  that  murder  was  a  crime,  eminently  so 
where  the  murdered  stood  related  to  him  as  did  the  little 
orphans  in  the  Tower,  who  seemed  so  beautiful  and  strong 
in  their  very  helplessness  to  the  hired  and  hardened  villains 
who  saw  them — 

Girdling  one  another 
Within  their  innocent  alabaster  arms  ; 
Their  lips  like  four  red  roses  on  a  stalk, 
Which,  in  their  summer  beauty,  kissed  each  other. 

But  where  the  ruffians  had  pity,  Richard  had  none.     Am- 


86  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

bition  had  vanquished  pity  and,  for  the  time  being,  seared 
conscience.  His  worse  triumphed  over  his  better  nature. 
The  temptation  came  from  himself,  and  so  condemned 
himself.  The  nature  that  produced  it  was  bad,  and  its 
victory  made  the  nature  worse.  The  ability  to  tempt 
implies  sinfulness,  is  impossible  without  it. 

If,  now,  the  temptation  comes  from  without,  three  things 
are  possible — it  may  speak  either  (i)  to  still  fluid  evil 
desires,  and  make  them  crystallize  into  evil  action  ;  or  (2) 
to  innocence,  and  change  it  into  guilt ;  or  (3)  supply  it 
with  the  opportunity  of  rising  into  holiness.  A  word  or 
two  illustrative  of  these  three  possibilities.  The  Macbeth, 
not  of  history,  but  of  the  drama,  may  stand  as  an  illustra- 
tion  of  the  first.     He  is  a  man  full  of  ambition,  but  also 

Too  full  o'  the  rriilk  of  human  kindness 
To  catch  the  nearest  way. 

He  would  be  great,  but  guiltlessly  ;  what  he  would  highly, 
that  would  he  holily  : 

Would  not  play  false, 
And  yet  would  wrongly  win. 

And  this  man  has  a  queen,  with  his  ambition,  without  his 
scruples,  strong,  passionful,  pitiless  ;  and  she,  unsexed, 
filled,  from  crown  to  toe,  top-full  of  direst  cruelty,  becomes 
the  temptress,  works  upon  her  husband,  now  on  his 
strength,  now  on  his  weakness,  till  he  goes  to  his  fatal 
crime  and  still  more  fatal  remorse.  There  is  evil  before- 
hand in  both,  evil  irresolute  desires  in  the  man,  evil 
resolution  in  the  woman,  and  the  strength  forces  the 
weakness  to  incarnate  itself  in  deeds  conscience  will  not 
let  die. 

The  second  possibility — temptation  coming  to  innocence 
and  changing  it  into  guilt — we  may  find  illustrated  in  the 
splendid  scene  in  "  King  John,"  where  the  King  says  to 
Hubert — 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST  87 

If  the  midnight  bell 
Did,  with  his  iron  tongue  and  brazen  mouth, 
Sound  one  into  the  drowsy  ear  of  night  ; 
If  this  same  were  a  churchyard  where  we  stand, 
And  thou  possessed  with  a  thousand  wrongs  ;      ' 

if,  indeed,  Hubert  could  see  without  eyes,  hear  without 
ears,  reply  without  a  tongue,  the  King  would,  **  in  despite 
of  brooded  watchful  day,"  have  poured  into  his  bosom  the 
thoughts  that  filled  his  own.  The  word  murder  remains 
unspoken,  but  the  thing  is  suggested.  By  voice  and  look 
and  fawning  flattering  speech,  the  honest  tender-hearted 
Hubert  is  betrayed  into  a  promise  against  the  life  of  the 
boy  he  loved.  And  so  the  tempted  falls,  the  innocent  is 
made  the  guilty. 

The  third  possibility — innocence  raised  through  tempta- 
tion into  holiness — is,  perhaps,  nowhere  better  illustrated 
than  in  the  beautiful  creation  which,  like  the  genius  of 
chastity  and  all  that  is  winsome  in  woman,  has  been,  as 
it  were,  enshrined  in  "  Measure  for  Measure,"  the  play 
that  so  well  expounds  its  own  saying — 

'Tis  one  thing  to  be  tempted,  Escalus, 
Another  thing  to  fall. 

Isabella,  lovely  as  pure,  most  womanly  in  her  unconscious 
strength,  stainless  among  the  stained,  loving  her  doomed 
brother  too  well  to  sin  for  him,  triumphs  over  his  tears 
and  entreaties,  the  wiles  and  threats  of  the  Deputy,  and 
emerges  from  her  great  temptation  chaster,  more  beautiful 
in  the  blossom  of  her  perfect  womanhood,  than  she  had 
been  before.  The  fierce  fire  refined,  and  what  issued 
from  it  was  a  being  purified,  not  simply  innocent,  but 
righteous,  clothed  in  the  invisible  but  impenetrable 
armour  of  sweet  and  conscious  simplicity. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  consider  the  Temptation 
of  Christ  in  relation  to  His  sinlessness.  Temptation 
implies  (i)  ability  in  the  tempted  to  sin  or  not  sin.  Jesus 
had,  to  speak  with  the  schoolmen,  the  "  posse  non  pec* 


88  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

care,"  not  the  "  non  posse  peccare."  Had  He  possessed 
the  latter,  He  had  been  intemptable.  (2)  Evil  must  be 
presented  to  the  tempted  in  a  manner  disguised,  plausible, 
attractive.  It  was  so  to  Jesus.  When  He  was  hungry, 
it  was  sensuous  in  its  form ;  when  He  stood  on  the 
Temple  tower,  whether  in  body  or  in  vision  it  matters 
not,  it  was  imaginative  ;  when  He  was  offered  the  king- 
doms of  the  world  if  He  would  worship  Satan,  it  was 
rational.  Each  temptation  appealed  to  a  subjective  de- 
sire or  need.  (3)  The  tempter  must  be  sinful,  the 
tempted  may  be  innocent.  And  Christ  was  the  tempted. 
The  temptation  came  to  Him,  did  not  proceed  from 
Him,  yet  performed  a  high  and  necessary  function  in  His 
personal  and  official  discipline.  Whether  the  innocent 
become  righteous  or  guilty,  holy  or  depraved,  temptation 
alone  can  reveal.  The  untried  is  a  negative  character, 
can  become  positive  only  through  trial.  Till  every  link 
in  the  chain  that  is  to  hold  the  vessel  to  its  anchor  be 
tested,  you  cannot  be  certain  that  it  is  of  adequate 
strength.  Till  the  bridge  over  which  myriads  are  to  sweep 
in  the  swift-rushing  train  be  proved  of  sufficient  strength, 
you  cannot  regard  it  as  a  safe  pathway.  So,  till  the  will 
has  been  solicited  to  the  utmost  to  evil,  its  fidelity  to  right- 
eousness cannot  be  held  absolute.  The  way  to  obedience 
lies  through  suffering.  The  inflexible  in  morals  is  what 
will  not  bend,  however  immense  and  intense  the  strain. 
Only  a  Christ  tempted,  "yet  without  sin,"  could  be  the 
perfect  Christ.  What  He  endured  proved  His  adequacy 
for  His  work  ;  and  out  of  His  great  trial  He  emerged,  not 
simply  sinless,  which  He  had  been  before,  but  righteous — 
that  most  beautiful  of  objects  to  the  Divine  eye  and  most 
winsome  of  beings  to  the  human  heart,  a  perfect  man, 
*'  holy,  harmless,  undefiled,  and  separate  from  sinners." ' 
Our  discussion  conducts,  then,  to  but  one  conclusion  ; 
*  Heb.  vii.  26. 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST.  89 

temptation  was  not  only  possible  to  the  sinlessness,  but 
necessary  to  the  holiness,  of  Christ.  Yet  this  conclusion 
is  but  an  introduction,  only  clears  the  way  for  the  study 
of  what  we  term  the  Temptation.  And  here  we  may 
remark  that  the  place  where  it  happened  is  not  without 
significance.  Into  what  wilderness  Jesus  was  led  to  be 
tempted  we  do  not  know — whether  the  wild  and  lonely 
solitudes  watched  by  the  mountains  where"  Moses  and 
Elijah  struggled  in  prayer  and  conquered  in  faith,  or  the 
steep  rock  by  the  side  of  the  Jordan  overlooking  the  Dead 
Sea,  which  later  tradition  has  made  the  arena  of  this  fell 
conflict.  Enough,  the  place  was  a  desert,  waste,  barren, 
shelterless,  overhead  the  hot  sun,  underfoot  the  burning 
sand  or  blistering  rock.  No  outbranching  trees  made  a 
cool  restful  shade ;  no  spring  upbursting  with  a  song  of 
gladness  came  to  relieve  the  thirst ;  no  flowers  bloomed, 
pleasing  the  eye  with  colour  and  the  nostrils  with  fra- 
grance :  all  was  drear  desert.  Now,  two  things  may  be 
here  noted — the  desolation,  and  the  solitude.  The  heart 
that  loves  Nature  is  strangely  open  to  her  influences. 
The  poet  sees  a  glory  in  the  light  of  setting  suns,  and  the 
round  ocean,  and  the  living  air,  which  exalts  and  soothes 
him ;  but  a  land  of  waste  and  cheerless  gloom  casts 
over  his  spirit  a  shadow  as  of  the  blackness  of  darkness. 
And  Jesus  had  the  finest,  most  sensitive  soul  that  ever 
looked  through  human  eyes.  He  loved  this  beautiful 
world,  loved  the  stars  that  globed  themselves  in  the  heaven 
above,  the  flowers  that  bloomed  in  beauty  on  the  earth 
beneath,  the  light  and  shade  that  played  upon  the  face  of 
Nature,  now  brightening  it  as  with  the  smile  of  God,  now 
saddening  it  as  with  the  pity  that  gleams  through  a  cloud 
of  tears.  Think,  then,  how  the  desolation  must  have 
deepened  the  shadows  on  His  spirit,  increased  the  burden 
that  made  Him  almost  faint  at  the  opening  of  His  way. 
And  He  was  in  solitude — alone  there,  without  the  comfort 
7 


90  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

of  a  human  presence,  the  fellowship  of  a  kindred  soul. 
Yet  the  loneliness  was  a  sublime  necessity.  In  His 
supreme  moments  society  was  impossible  to  Him.  The 
atmosphere  that  surrounded  the  Temptation,  the  Trans- 
figuration, the  Agony,  and  the  Cross,  He  alone  could 
breathe ;  in  it  human  sympathy  slept  or  died,  and  human 
speech  could  make  no  sound.  Out  of  loneliness  He  issued 
to  begin  His  work  ;  into  loneliness  He  passed  to  end  it. 
The  moments  that  made  His  work  divinest  were  His  own 
and  His  Father's. 

But  much  more  significant  than  the  scene  of  the  Temp- 
tation is  the  place  where  it  stands  in  the  history  of  the 
life  and  mind  of  Jesus.  It  stands  just  after  the  Baptism, 
and  before  the  Ministry;  just  after  the  long  silence,  and 
before  the  brief  yet  eternal  speech;  just  after  the  years 
of  privacy,  and  before  the  few  but  glorious  months  of 
publicity.  Now,  consider  what  this  means.  The  Baptism 
had  made  Him  manifest  as  the  Messiah.  In  the  Baptist 
emotions  inexpressible  had  been  awakened.  His  new- 
born hopes  made  him  a  new  man,  lifted  him  into  the 
splendid  humility  which  rejoiced  to  be,  like  the  morning 
star,  quenched  in  the  light  of  the  risen  Sun.  But  John 
was  here  a  pale  reflection  of  Jesus.  The  one's  emo- 
tions were  to  the  other's  as  *' moonlight  unto  sunlight, 
and  as  water  unto  wine."  We  must  not  imagine  that 
every  day  was  the  same  to  Christ,  or  Christ  the  same  on 
every  day.  He  had  His  great  moments  as  we  have.  We 
may  call  the  supreme  moment  when  the  soul  awakens 
to  God,  and  the  man  realizes  manhood,  conversion,  the 
new  birth,  or  what  we  please.  What  the  experience  we 
so  name  signifies  to  us,  the  moment  symbolized  by 
the  Baptism  signified  to  Jesus,  only  with  a  difference  in 
degree  whijh  His  pre-eminence  alone  can  measure.  It 
marked  His  awakening  to  all  that  was  involved  in  Messiah- 
ship  ;  ani  buch  an  awakening  could  not   come  without 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST.  91 

utmost  tumult  of  spirit— tumult  that  only  the  solitude  and 
struggle  of  the  wilderness  could  calm.  The  outward 
expresses  the  inward  change.  Before  this  moment  no 
miracle;  after  it  the  miracles  begin  and  go  on  multiplying. 
Before  it  no  speech,  no  claim  of  extraordinary  mission, 
only  Divine  and  golden  silence ;  after  it  the  teaching  with 
authority,  the  founding  of  the  kingdom,  the  creating  of 
the  world's  light.  Before  it  the  Carpenter  of  Nazareth, 
the  son  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  doing,  in  beautiful  meekness, 
the  common  duties  of  the  common  day ;  after  it  the 
Christ  of  God,  the  Revealer  of  the  Father,  the  Life  and 
the  Light  of  men.  Now,  He  who  became  so  different  to 
others  had  first  become  as  different  to  Himself.  What  was 
soon  to  be  revealed  to  the  world  was  then  made  manifest 
to  His  own  soul.  And  the  revelation  was  dazzling  enough 
to  blind,  was  so  brilliant  as  to  need  a  solitude  where  the 
senses,  undistracted  by  society,  could  be  adjusted  to  the 
new  light  and  perceive  all  it  unveiled.  And  so  the  Spirit 
which  in  that  glorious  hour  possessed  Him,  drove  Him 
into  the  wilderness  to  essay  His  strength  and  realize  the 
perfect  manhood  that  was  perfect  Messiahship. 

We  must,  then,  study  the  Temptation  through  the  con- 
sciousness of  Jesus.  Only  by  the  one  can  the  true  signifi- 
cance of  the  other  be  revealed.  The  mind  that  can  for  forty 
days  be  its  own  supreme  society  is  a  mind  full  of  fellest 
conflicts.  We  have  seen  how  much  the  Baptism  signified 
for  Christ,  how  for  Him  it  had  ended  an  old  and  inaugu- 
rated a  new  life.  Now  observe,  in  our  greatest  and  most 
decisive  times  the  Divine  and  the  devilish  lie  very  near 
each  other;  supernal  and  infernal  courses  both  seem  so 
possible  as  to  be  almost  equal.  And  the  two  appear  to 
have  been  for  the  moment  strangely  mingled  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  Christ.  Matthew  says,  "  He  was  led  up  of 
the  Spirit  into  the  wilderness,  to  be  tempted  of  the  devil;*" 

'  Matt.  iv.  I. 


92  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

and  Mark,  "  immediately  the  Spirit  driveth  him  into  the 
wilderness.^ "  He  was,  therefore,  the  subject  at  once  of 
Divine  possession  and  demoniac  tem.ptation.  And  the  two 
were  in  a  manner  related,  the  one  involved  the  other  : 
the  first  could  become  perfect  only  by  the  defeat  of  the 
second.  To  Him  the  great  moral  alternatives  came  as 
they  had  never  come  to  any  one  before,  as  they  can 
never  come  again.  The  forty  days  were  not  all  days  of 
temptation — were  days  of  ecstasy  and  exaltation  as  well. 
Sunshine  and  cloud,  light  and  darkness,  fought  their 
eternal  battle  in  and  round  His  soul.  When  the  battle 
ended,  the  sunshine  and  light  were  found  victorious; 
the  cloud  and  the  darkness  had  to  leave  the  field  broken, 
vanquished  for  evermore. 

The  Temptation  and  the  assumption  by  Jesus  of  the 
Messianic  character  and  office  are  thus  essentially  re- 
lated. The  one  supplies  the  other  with  the  condition  and 
occasion  of  its  existence.  The  office  is  assailed  in  and 
through  the  person.  These  indeed,  blend  in  Jesus.  Had 
He  ceased  to  be  the  person  He  was.  He  had  ceased  to  be 
the  Messiah.  Had  He  not  been  Jesus,  He  could  not 
have  been  the  Christ.  Hence,  had  the  person  been  ruined, 
the  office  must  have  perished  ;  or  had  the  office  been 
depraved,  the  person  must  have  failed  in  character  and  in 
work.  The  temptations  aim  at  a  common  end,  but  by 
different  means,  appeal  now  to  Jesus  and  again  to  the 
Christ.  When  He  was  driven  into  the  wilderness  three 
points  must  have  stood  out  from  the  tumult  of  thought 
and  feeling  pre-eminent,  (i)  The  relation  of  the  super- 
natural to  the  natural  in  Himself;  or,  on  the  other  side. 
His  relation  to  God  as  His  ideal  human  Son.  (2)  The 
relation  of  God  to  the  supernatural  in  His  person,  and  the 
official  in  His  mission  ;  and  (3)  the  nature  of  the  kingdom 
He  had  come  to  found,  and  the  agencies  by  which  it  was 
'Mark  i.  12 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST.  93 

to  live  and  extend.  And  these  precisely  were  the  issues 
that  emerged  in  the  several  temptations.  They  thus  stood 
rooted  in  the  then  consciousness  of  Christ  and  related 
in  the  most  essential  way  to  His  spirit.  How,  and  to 
what  extent,  a  word  or  two  of  exposition  may  make  more 
apparent. 

I.  The  First  Temptation.  Though  in  form  sensuous,  it 
is  in  essence  moral  or  spiritual.  Observe,  the  language  is 
hypothetical,  *'//  thou  art  the  Son  of  God,"  and  is  subtly 
meant  to  express  real  but  removable  doubt  in  the  mind  of 
the  tempter  and  to  insinuate  doubt  into  the  mind  of  the 
tempted.  It  says,  as  it  were,  on  the  one  side,  *'You 
may,  or  may  not,  be  the  Son  of  God ;  I  cannot  tell.  Yet 
I  am  open  to  conviction  ;  convince  me  ; "  and  suggests, 
on  the  other,  "Your  consciousness  of  Messiahship  may  be 
illusive;  you  maybe  the  victim  of  the  Baptist's  enthusiasm 
and  your  own  imagination  ;  clearly  your  belief  in  yourself 
and  your  mission  is,  without  some  higher  warrant,  un- 
warranted." Then  the  answer  to  the  double  doubt  was 
so  possible,  simple,  conclusive,  "  Command  these  stones 
to  be  made  bread  !  "  The  temptation  was  great ;  had 
Christ  lost  faith  in  Himself,  Christianity  had  never  been. 
It  was  reasonable,  too.  Israel  had  been  divinely  fed  while 
divinely  led.  What  had  been  right  to  the  people,  need  not 
be  wrong  to  the  Son,  of  God.  And  where  supernatural 
power  was  supposed  to  exist,  could  it  be  wrong  to  test  its 
reality  in  an  act  so  holy  and  excellent  as  the  preservation 
of  an  imperilled  life?  But  the  temptation,  though  formid- 
able, was  victoriously  resisted.  Christ  did  not  take  His 
life  into  His  own  hands  ;  left  it  in  the  hands  of  God. 

Now,  what  constituted  this  a  temptation  ?  where  lay 
its  evil?  Suppose  Christ  had  commanded  the  stones  to 
become  bread,  what  then  ?  To  Christ,  considering  the 
work  He  had  to  do,  two  things  were  necessary.  He  had 
to  live  His  personal  life  (i)  within  the  limits  necessary  to 


94  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

man,  and  (2)  in  perfect  dependence  on  God.  Had  He 
transgressed  either  of  these  conditions  He  had  ceased  to 
be  man's  ideal  Brother  or  God's  ideal  Son.  Man  cannot 
create;  he  lives  by  obeying  Nature.  He  has  to  plough,  to 
sow,  to  reap,  to  garner  and  winnow,  to  bruise  and  bake 
his  grain,  that  he  may  eat  and  live.  Now,  had  Christ 
by  a  direct  miracle  fed  Himself,  He  had  lifted  Himself 
out  of  the  circle  and  system  of  humanity,  had  annulled 
the  very  terms  of  the  nature  which  made  Him  one  with 
man.  While  His  supernatural  power  was  His  own,  it 
existed  not  for  Himself,  but  for  us.  The  moment  He  had 
stooped  to  save  self  He  had  become  disqualified  to  save 
men.  The  ideal  human  life  must  be  perfect  in  its  depend- 
ence on  God,  absolute  in  its  obedience.  The  ideal  Son 
could  not  act  as  if  He  had  no  Father.  And  so  His  choice 
was  not  to  be  His  own  Providence,  but  to  leave  Himself 
to  the  Divine.  He  conquered  by  faith,  and  His  first 
victory  was  like  His  last.  The  taunts  He  had  to  hear 
and  bear  on  the  cross — "  He  saved  others,  himself-  he 
cannot  save;  "  "  He  trusted  in  God,  let  Him  deliver  him 
now,  if  He  will  have  him  " — were  but  a  repetition  of  this 
earlier  temptation  ;  and  then,  as  now,  though  the  agony 
was  deeper  and  the  darkness  more  dense.  He  triumphed 
by  giving  Himself  into  the  hands  of  the  Father. 

2.  The  Second  Temptation.'  Here,  as  before,  the 
opening  clause  is  hypothetical,  and  suggestive  of  the  same 
double  doubt ;  but  it  is  proposed  to  remove  it  by  an  exactly 
opposite  act.  The  first  temptation  required  a  miracle 
of  independence  ;  the  second  requires  one  of  dependence. 
While  that  was  sensuous,  this  is  imaginative  in  its  form. 
An  act  of  absolute  self-sufficiency  was  suggested  through 
a  subjective  need  and  capacity ;  an  act  of  absolute  faith 
is  suggested  through  the  sublimity  of  an  objective  relation 

'  For  reasons  that  need  not  be  here  stated,  the  order  of  Mattheur  is- 
followed,  rather  than  Luke's. 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST,  95 

and  effect.  What  could  better  exalt  into  a  Divine  and 
fearless  ecstasy  an  imaginative  soul,  loving  God  too  well 
to  distrust  Him,  than  the  thought  of  a  trust  so  boundless 
as  to  believe  that  the  impalpable  and  yielding- air  would 
be  made  by  His  hands  as  safe  as  the  solid  earth  ?  or 
what  could  better  lift  into  dauntless  enthusiasm  a  mind 
anxious  to  regenerate  sense-bound  men  than  the  vision 
of  a  descent  into  the  crowd  in  the  visible  arms  of  Heaven, 
the  manifest  supernatural  Messenger  of  the  merciful  God? 
The  temptation  was,  on  the  one  side,  powerful  to  a  spirit 
full  of  generous  trust  in  God  ;  and,  on  the  other,  no  less 
powerful  to  a  spirit  full  of  generous  designs  for  man. 
And  it  came,  too,  clothed  in  the  garb  of  a  Divine  oracle — 
*'  He  shall  give  his  angels  charge  concerning  thee ;  and 
in  their  hands  they  shall  bear  thee  up,  lest  at  any  time 
thou  dash  thy  foot  against  a  stone." 

Now,  what  was  the  evil  in  this  suggested  act  ?  It  was 
twofold,  evil  alike  on  the  Godward  and  on  the  manward 
side.  In  the  first  aspect  it  meant  that  God  should  be 
forced  to  do  for  Him  what  He  had  before  refused  to 
do  for  Himself — make  Him  an  object  of  supernatural 
care,  exempted  from  obedience  to  natural  law,  a  child  of 
miracle,  exceptional  in  His  very  physical  relations  to 
God  and  Nature.  In  the  second  aspect  it  meant  that 
He  was  to  be  a  Son  of  Wonder,  clothed  in  marvels, 
living  a  life  that  struck  the  senses  and  dazzled  the  fancies 
of  the  poor  vulgar  crowed.  In  the  one  case  it  had  been 
fatal  to  Himself,  in  the  other  to  His  mission.  Had  He 
been  the  Child  of  a  visible  Providence,  which  suspended 
for  His  sake  every  natural  and  human  law,  then  He  had 
ceased  to  be  touched  with  a  feeling  of  our  infirmities,  had 
never  been  made  perfect  through  suffering,  and  so  had 
never  become,  as  "  a  merciful  and  faithful  High  Priest," 
a  sublime  object  of  faith  and  source  of  peace.  Had  He 
been   encircled  with  wonders,  heralded  by  marvels,  then 


96  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIEE  OF  CHRIST. 

He  had  led  men  by  sense,  not  by  conscience  and  reason, 
had  reached  them  through  their  lowest  and  most  vulgar, 
not  through  their  highest  and  noblest,  qualities  ;  and  so 
they  could  have  owed  to  Him  no  birth  from  above,  no 
real  spiritual  change.  Special  as  were  His  relations  to 
God,  He  did  not  presume  on  these,  but,  with  Divine  self- 
command,  lived,  though  the  supernatural  Son,  like  the 
natural  Child  of  the  Eternal  Father.  His  human  life  was 
as  real  as  it  was  ideal ;  the  Divine  did  not  supersede  the 
human,  nor  seek  to  transcend  its  limits,  physical  and 
spiritual.  And  His  fidelity  to  our  nature  has  been  its 
most  pre-eminent  blessing.  No  man  who  knows  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  will  presume  either  on  the  Providence 
or  the  mercy  of  God,  because  certain  that  these  remain, 
even  in  their  highest  achievements,  the  dutiful  servants  of 
Divine  Wisdom  and  Righteousness.  He  who  came  to 
show  us  the  Father  showed  Him  not  as  a  visible  Guardian, 
not  as  an  arbitrary  mechanical  Providence,  but  as  an 
invisible  Presence  about  our  spirits,  about  our  ways, 
source  of  our  holiest  thoughts,  our  tenderest  feelings, 
our  wisest  actions.  The  Only  Begotten  lived  as  one  of 
many  brethren,  though  as  the  only  one  conscious  of  His 
Sonship.  And  perhaps  His  self-sacrifice  reached  here 
its  sublimest  point.  He  would  not,  and  He  did  not, 
tempt  the  Lord  His  God,  but  lived  His  beautiful  and 
perfect  life  within  the  terms  of  the  human,  yet  penetrated 
and  possessed  by  the  Divine. 

3.  The  Third  Temptation.  Here  the  temptation 
seems  eminently  gross.  Yet  devil-worship  can  assume 
many  forms,  and  some  of  these  may  be  most  refined. 
Worship  is  homage,  and  homage  to  a  person,  real  or 
supposed,  representative  of  certain  principles,  modes  of 
action,  and  aims.  What  it  here  means  seems  evident 
enough.  Jesus  is  recognized  as  seeking  a  kingdom,  as 
intending,  indeed,  to  found  one.     His  aims  are  confessed 


THE  TEMPTATION  OF  CHRIST.  97 

to  be  more  than  Jewish,  not  national,  but  universal,  not 
an  extension  of  Israel,  but  a  comprehension  of  the  world. 
It  is  known  that  Hi^  purpose  is  to  be  the  Messiah,  not  of 
the  Jews,  but  of  man.  The  only  question  is  'as  to  the 
nature  of  His  kinghood  and  kingdom.  The  kingdom  here 
offered  is  one  not  of  the  spirit,  but  *'  of  the  world."  And 
"world"  here  means  not  what  it  may  be  to  the  good,  but 
what  it  is  to  the  bad.  It  and  its  kingdoms  may  be  won 
at  once,  will  be  if  Jesus  worships  the  devil,  ix,,  makes 
evil  His  good,  uses  unholy  means  to  accomplish  His  ends. 
It  is  as  if  the  tempter  had  said,  "  Survey  the  world,  and 
mark  what  succeeds.  Away  there  in  Italy  lives  and 
rules  the  Emperor  of  the  world,  a  selfish  sensual  man, 
whose  right  is  might.  Over  there  in  Csesarea  sits  his 
red-handed,  yet  vacillating.  Procurator.  In  your  own 
Galilee  a  treacherous  and  lustful  Herod  reigns,  its  deputy 
lord.  Up  in  Jerusalem  are  priests  and  scribes,  great  in 
things  external,  the  fierce  fanatics  of  formalism.  Every- 
where unholy  men  rule,  unholy  means  prevail.  Worldli- 
ness  holds  the  world  in  fee.  By  it  alone  can  you  conquer. 
Use  the  means  and  the  men  of  Caesar,  and  your  success 
will  be  swift  and  sure.  Worship  me,  and  the  kingdoms 
of  the  world  are  thine.** 

The  Temptation  was  subtly  adapted  to  the  mood  and 
the  moment,  and  vv^as  as  evil  as  subtle.  Bad  means  make 
bad  ends.  Good  ends  do  not  justify  evil  means;  evil 
means  deprave  good  ends.  So  a  Messianic  kingdom,  in- 
stituted and  established  by  worldliness,  had  been  a  worldly 
kingdom,  no  better  than  the  coarse  and  sensuous  Empire 
of  Rome.  And  Jesus,  while  He  felt  the  force,  saw  the 
evil  of  the  temptation,  and  vanquished  it  by  the  truth  on 
which  His  own  spiritual  and  eternal  city  was  to  be  founded, 
"  Thou  shalt  worship  the  Lord  thy  God,  and  Him  only 
shalt  thou  serve." 

The  three  Temptations  are  thus  as  essentially  related  to 


98  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

each  other  as  to  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  They  are  attempts  to 
ruin  the  kingdom,  the  first  through  its  King,  the  second 
through  its  God,  the  third  through  its  means  and  agents. 
They  are  the  successive  scenes,  or  acts,  of  one  great  drama, 
where  the  actors  are  spiritual,  the  struggles  and  triumphs 
the  same.  And  yet  they  describe  a  contest  representative 
and  universal.  Jesus  is  here  the  representative  Man,  the 
Source  and  Head  of  the  new  humanity,  the  Founder  of  the 
kingdom  that  is  to  be.  When  He  triumphs,  it  triumphs. 
"When  He  is  victorious,  all  are  victorious  that  live  in  and 
by  Him.  And  His  victory,  as  it  was  for  humanity,  was  by 
humanity.  The  supernatural  energies  that  were  in  Him 
He  did  not  use  for  Himself.  In  our  nature,  as  in  our 
name,  He  stood,  fought,  conquered.  How  perfectly,  then, 
is  He  qualified  to  be  at  once  our  Saviour  and  Example  ! 
The  heart  that  loves  us  is  a  heart  that  was  once  strained 
in  a  great  battle,  where  the  pain  was  its  own  and  the  vic- 
tory ours.  To  Him,  as  He  lives  and  reigns  in  love  and 
might,  we  can  come  in  sin  and  weakness,  in  joy  and  sorrow, 
certain  that,  as  He  **  suffered,  being  tempted,  He  is  able  to 
succour  them  that  are  tempted."^ 

»Heb.  ii.  la 


VI. 


THE  NEW   TEACHER;    THE  KINGDOM 
OF  HE  A  VEN.^ 

Jesus  emerged  from  the  desert  to  enter  on  His  great 
career  as  the  Preacher  of  **  the  kingdom  of  God."  The 
season  was  the  spring,  with  its  bright  heaven,  its  fresh 
sweet  earth,  its  gladsome,  soft,  yet  strengthening  air,  its 
limpid  living  water.  And  within  as  without  all  was  spring- 
time, the  season  of  millionfold  forces  gladly  and  grandly 
creative,  of  sunlight  now  clear  and  blithesome,  and  now 
veiled  with  clouds  that  came  only  to  break  into  fruitful 
showers.  **  Jesus  returned  in  the  power  of  the  Spirit  into 
Galilee,'*  and  Galilee  felt  and  owned  the  Spirit  and  the 
power.  In  the  homes  of  its  peasantry  and  the  hamlets  of 
its  fishermen,  on  the  shores  of  its  beautiful  sea,  in  the 
towns  and  villages  that  stood  on  its  banks  and  were  mir- 
rored in  its  waves,  He  preached  His  Gospel.  Only  His 
own  Nazareth  refused  to  hear  Him.*  Thither,  indeed,  He 
had  gone,  had  entered  the  synagogue  on  the  Sabbath,  as 
His  custom  was,  and  had  stood  up  to  read.  To  Him  the 
place  was  full  of  sacred  associations.  He  had  there,  as 
boy  and  youth  and  man,  listened  for  hours  and  days  to 
the  voice  of  God.  Memories  of  visions  more  glorious  than 
had  come  to  Moses  or  Isaiah,  of  meditations  that  lifted 
time  into  eternity  and  filled  man  with  God,  of  loved  friends 
passed  into  silence  and  rest,  of  moments  when  the  unseen 

»  Matt.  iv.  17  ;  Mark  i.  14,  15  ;  Luke  iv.  14-32, 
■  Luke  iv.  16-29. 


loo         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

opened  to  the  eye  and  the  unheard  entered  the  soul,  made 
the  place  to  Him  awful  yet  attractive  as  the  gate  of  heaven 
to  one  who  has  approached  with  reverent  feet  and  beheld 
in  the  distance  the  glories  that  dazzle  mortal  sight.  But 
others  had  their  associations  as  well  as  He,  and  theirs 
were  not  always  as  sacred  as  His.  The  synagogue  was 
often  the  scene  of  strife.  The  conflict  of  qpinion  was  not 
unknown  there.  Rival  schools,  sects,  and  teachers  have 
never  been  slow  to  express  their  differences,  and  in  the 
battle  of  words  the  Jew  has  shown  pre-eminent  skill.  So 
the  men  of  Nazareth  had  their  personal  rivalries  and  spites, 
and  when  One  they  knew,  so  far  as  the  senses  can  know, 
rose,  read,  and  applied  to  Himself  the  prophetic  words, 
"  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because  He  hath 
anointed  me  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor,"  they  re- 
ceived His  gracious  speech  with  incredulous  wonder.  But 
when  He  proceeded  to  speak  with  authority,  to  rebuke 
their  unbelief,  to  quote  against  them  their  own  proverbs, 
then  they  *'  were  filled  with  wrath,  rose  up  and  thrust  him 
out  of  the  city."  And  He  went  His  way,  and  found  else- 
where men  who  heard  gladly  His  words  of  power. 

The  strange  thing  about  the  new  Teacher  was  not  His 
having  been  untaught  and  a  carpenter.  The  great  crea- 
tive spirits  of  Israel  had  never  been  the  sons  of  a  school. 
They  were  not  made  in  the  academy  or  the  senate ;  their 
diploma  came  straight  from  Heaven,  was  the  direct  gift  of 
the  Almighty.  Moses,  the  Lawgiver,  was  educated  amid 
the  sultry  slopes  of  Horeb  while  tending  the  flocks  of 
Jethro,  his  father-in-law.  David,  the  typical  theocratic 
king,  the  maker  of  the  grandest  Psalms,  was  taken  from 
the  sheepfold,  "  from  following  the  ewes  great  with  young." 
When  the  prophetic  schools  were  worse  than  dumb,  men 
like  the  herdsman  of  Tekoa,  or  the  patient  suffering  son 
of  Hilkiah,  had  become  the  true  speakers  for  God.  A  man 
may  be  trained  to  be  a  scholar  or  thinker,  statesman  or 


THE  NE  W  TEA  CHER.  loi 

mechanic,  but  not  a  prophet.  That  is  a  Divine  vocation, 
and  the  calling  must  be  of  God,  cannot  be  of  man.  And 
even  v^hen  the  vocation  had  ceased  to  come,  and  teaching 
was  only  professional  drill  in  the  letters  of  a  dead  past, 
the  great  man  of  the  school  might  still  be  a  son  of  the 
workshop  or  the  field.  The  celebrated  masters  of  the 
Talmud  and  the  Targums  were  tradesmen  and  artizans, 
weavers,  tent-makers,  labourers.  The  rabbi  was  qualified 
rather  than  disqualified  for  his  office  by  a  handicraft.  And 
so  it  was  no  strange  thing  in  Israel  that  one  hitherto 
known  as  a  carpenter  should  stand  forward  a  professed 
Teacher,  a  man  learned  in  the  law  and  the  prophets. 

But  the  strange  thing  was  the  new  Teacher  Himself. 
He  stood  distinguished  from  all  the  rabbis  who  had  been, 
or  then  were,  in  Israel.  Of  the  points  that  made  Him 
pre-eminent  and  unique  three  may  be  here  specified. 

(i)  The  relation  between  His  person  and  His  word.  The 
Teacher  made  the  truth  He  taught.  His  teaching  was 
His  articulated  person.  His  person  His  incorporated  teach- 
ing. The  divinity  the  one  expressed  the  other  embodied. 
He  came  to  found  a  kingdom  by  manifesting  Hiskinghood, 
by  declaring  Himself  a  King.  The  King  was  the  centre 
round  which  the  kingdom  crystallized.  His  first  words 
announced  its  advent ;  his  last  affirmed  its  reality,  though 
a  reality  too  sublimely  ideal  to  be  intelligible  to  the  man 
of  the  world  who  knew  enough  to  ask  the  question,  *'  What 
is  truth  ?  "  but  not  enough  to  wait  for  its  answer.  And 
the  first  word  and  the  last  were  alike  revelations  of  Him- 
self; the  truth  He  was  incarnated,  as  it  were,  in  speech, 
that  it  might  live  an  ideal  life  on  earth,  while  He  lived  a 
real  and  personal  life  in  heaven. 

(2)  The  consciousness  He  had  of  Himself  and  His 
truth ;  its  authority  and  creative  energy.  He  knew  that 
He  was  true  and  His  word  true ;  was  certain  that,  though 
He  never  wrote,  only  spoke,  His  words  were  imperishable 


I02  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

— would  outlast  heaven  and  earth.  He  was,  at  the  first 
as  at  the  last,  at  the  last  as  at  the  first,  certain  of  the 
reality  of  His  words  and  claims,  of  their  endurance  and 
triumph.  He  was  as  calmly  and  consciously  confident 
when  He  sat,  pitied  by  Pilate,  in  the  shadow  of  Calvary 
as  when  He  went  forth,  approved  by  John,  to  preach,  in 
His  fresh  and  glorious  manhood,  *'  the  gospel  of  the  king- 
dom of  God." 

(3)  His  knowledge  of,His  truth  and  mission  was  through- 
out perfect  and  self-consistent.  His  first  word  revealed 
His  purpose,  expressed  His  aim,  embodied  His  grand  idea. 
He  did  not  learn  by  experience ;  He  knew  by  Divine  in- 
tmtion  what  He  had  come  to  accomplish.  His  progress 
was  not  a  series  of  tentative  efforts,  of  mended  mistakes, 
but  an  orderly  movement  to  a  consciously  conceived  end. 
*' Had  Christ  at  first  a  plan?"  is  a  question  which  has 
often  been  discussed.  "  Plan  '*  is  a  word  too  little  ideal 
and  spiritual,  too  mechanical  and  pragmatic,  to  be  here 
appropriate.  If  we  could  use  Idea  in  the  Platonic  sense, 
as  a  term  denoting  the  archetypal  image  or  pattern  of 
things  in  the  Divine  reason,  then  I  would  say,  Christ  had 
at  the  beginning  the  Idea  He  meant  to  realize,  knew  the 
end  toward  which  He  and  His  were  then  and  evermore  to 
strive.  And  the  evidence  lives  in  the  phrase  which  was 
the  most  frequent  on  His  lips,  "The  kingdom  of  heaven." 
He  who  has  penetrated  its  meaning  knows  what  Christ 
came  to  do ;  he  who  has  not  done  so  has  yet  to  know  the 
Christ. 

What,  then,  does  the  phrase  **the  kingdom  of  heaven  " 
or  '*  of  God,"  mean  ?  Now,  it  is  not  possible  to  explain  it 
simply  through  the  qualifying  terms,  "  of  heaven  "  or  "  of 
God ; "  we  must  first  understand  what  the  term  they 
qualify  signifies.  *'  Kingdom  "  is  the  cardinal  word,  and 
it  can  be  interpreted  only,  through  its  cardinal  idea.  King. 
The  notions  of  kinghood  are  very  varied — differ  in  different 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  HE  A  VEN.  103 

nations,  or  even  in  the  same  nation  in  different  ages.  In 
England  here  the  law  is  above  the  sovereign ;  lex  is  rex. 
The  Queen  is  the  greatest  subject  in  these  realms,  has  to 
be  loyal  to  the  superior  royalty  of  the  Constitution,  our 
true  lord  paramount.  The  Roman  Caesar  was  an  Impera- 
tor,  the  commander  of  an  army  become  the  monarch  of 
many  peoples,  with  his  old  military  supremacy  of  person 
and  will.  Of  the  Greek  kings  the  earlier  were  chiefs, 
leaders  of  men ;  but  the  later  were  tyrants,  despots  who 
had  dared  to  usurp  the  inalienable  rights  of  free  men.  In 
Israel  the  kinghood  was  theocratic ;  the  king  was  conse- 
crated by  the  priest  and  instructed  by  the  prophet  that  he 
might  administer  the  law  and  ordinances  of  the  God  who 
had  given  him  the  throne,  and  whose  will  he  existed  to 
enforce  and  obey.  But  this  ideal  had  seldom  been  realized, 
had  almost  always  been  depraved ;  and  the  fond  imagination 
of  the  people,  despairing  and  sick  of  the  oppressive  present, 
had  pictured  a  future  in  which  an  ideal  king,  the  anointed 
of  God,  should  come  to  reign  in  righteousness.  Yet  the 
good  dreamed  of  was  political  rather  than  moral ;  exalted 
the  Jew,  but  cast  down  the  Gentile ;  magnified  a  nation, 
but  did  not  ennoble  man.  Though  it  had  been  realized 
the  perfect  had  not  come. 

Now  these  notions  of  kinghood  hardly  help  us,  save  by 
way  of  contrast,  to  understand  Christ's.  Our  ordinary 
ideas  and  experiences  are  here  the  worst  possible  inter- 
preters. His  sovereignty  was  not  the  creature,  but  the 
creator,  of  law ;  the  kingdom  did  not  make  the  king,  but 
the  king  the  kingdom.  His  will  was  not  imperial — the 
transfigured  and  crowned  might  of  the  master  of  many 
legions — but  moral,  the  expression  of  a  self-vanquishing 
and  victorious  love.  His  authority  did  not  lessen  but 
enlarged  the  circle  of  human  rights  ;  made  men  awake 
to  claims  and  qualities  in  their  manhood  they  had  never 
known  before.     He  did  not  seek  the  sanction  and  seal  of 


I04  .        STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  priest,  or  the  counsel  and  guidance  of  the  prophet ; 
but  assumed  His  title  and  instituted  His  reign  at  the 
bidding  of  what  seemed  His  own  unauthorized  will.  And 
then  He  appeared  without  the  attributes  and  actions, 
without  the  character  and  designs  Israel  had  expected  in 
its  ideal  king.  He  had  no  antipathy  to  Rome,  but  was 
willing  to  be  a  dutiful  citizen  of  the  Empire.  He  did  not 
feel  that  His  kinghood  either  denied  or  excluded  Csesar ; 
that  tribute  either  touched  or  tarnished  His  supremacy. 
Men  said  He  was  of  David's  line ;  but  He  never  based 
His  royalty  on  His  descent.  When  they  came  to  make 
Him  a  king,  He  fled  from  their  hands.  When  they  asked 
Him  to  exercise  one  of  the  oldest  royal  prerogatives  and 
judge  a  cause.  He  refused.  His  whole  attitude  was  a 
puzzle,  a  dark  enigma,  to  His  contemporaries  ;  His  claim 
a  thing  to  be  ridiculed.  The  superscription  nailed  above 
His  cross  was  meant  to  be  ironical.  Pilate  thought  it 
mocked  the  Jews;  the  Jews  thought  it  mocked  Jesus. 
But  the  irony  lived  in  its  truth,  which  was  bitter  to  him 
who  wrote  and  those  who  read  it,  not  to  Him  who  bore  it 
above  His  head. 

Christ's  great  idea,  then,  is  too  much  His  own,  has  too 
little  of  the  local  and  transitory,  too  much  of  the  universal 
and  eternal,  to  be  interpreted  through  our  notions  of  king- 
hood.  If  it  is  to  be  understood  at  all,  it  must  be  through 
His  own  varied  and  many-featured  presentation.  We 
have  to  note  then,  at  the  outset,  that  He  has  two  formulae 
for  His  great  idea — "  The  kingdom  of  heaven,"  and  "  The 
kingdom  of  God."  These  are  used  with  a  slight  difference 
of  meaning,  and  each  is  best  understood  through  its  anti- 
thesis. "  The  kingdom  of  heaven  "  stands  opposed  to  the 
kingdoms  of  earth,  the  great  world-empires  that  lived  and 
ruled  by  the  strength  of  their  armies.  "  The  kingdom  of 
God  "  has  as  its  opposite  the  kingdom  of  evil,  or  Satan, 
the   great  empire  of  anarchy  and  darkness,  creative 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  HE  A  VEN.  105 

misery  and  death  to  man.  By  the  first  antithesis  Christ 
opposed  His  kingdom  to  the  empires  that  were  in  means 
and  ends,  in  principles  and  practice,  bad.  These  had 
grown  out  of  the  cruel  ambitions,  the  jealousies,  and 
hatreds  of  men  and  states ;  had  created  war,  with  its 
inevitable  offspring,  bloodshed,  famine,  pestilence,  the 
oppression  which  crushed  the  weak,  and  the  tyranny 
which  exalted  the  strong.  But  the  kingdom  from  above 
was  no  empire  of  an  overgrown  state,  no  ambitious 
scheme  of  a  ruthless  conqueror,  realized  by  merciless 
agents  and  means  ;  but  was  the  descent  of  a  spiritual 
power,  calm  and  ubiquitous  as  the  sunlight,  plastic,  pene- 
trative, pervasive  as  the  crystal  air,  silently  changing 
from  ill  to  good,  from  chaos  to  order,  both  man  and  his 
world. 

By  the  second  antithesis  Christ  opposed  His  kingdom  to 
the  empire  of  evil,  the  dominion  of  sin  in  the  individual 
and  the  race.  Out  of  sin  had  come  ruin  to  the  single  soul 
and  the  collective  society.  Evil  had  made  man  the  enemy 
of  man,  the  estranged  and  fearful  child  of  God.  But  the 
kingdom  of  God  was  good,  belonged  to  Him,  came  from 
Him,  existed  to  promote  His  ends,  to  vanquish  sin,  and 
restore  on  earth  an  obedience  that  would  make  it  happy 
and  harmonious  as  heaven.  So,  though  the  phrases  were 
Hebrew,  the  ideas  were  Christian.  The  old  terms  were 
transfigured  and  made  radiant  with  a  meaning  high  as 
heaven,  vast  as  the  universe,  inexhaustible  as  eternity. 

Were,  then,  the  two  phrases  to  be  distinguished  as  to 
meaning,  it  might  be  thus  :  the  one  indicates  the  nature 
and  character  of  the  new  kingdom,  the  other  its  source 
and  end.  But  for  the  interpretation  of  the  idea  it  is  neces- 
sary to  understand,  not  only  the  names  that  denote  it,  but 
also  its  more  distinctive  qualities,  aspects,  and  relations, 
(i)  It  is  present,  an  already  existing  reality,  none  the  less 
real  that  it  was  unseen,  undiscovered  by  the  very  men  who 


io6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  01  CHRIST. 

professed  to  be  looking  for  it.^  (2)  It  is  expansive,  has  an 
extensive  and  intensive  grow^th,  can  have  its  dominion 
extended  and  its  authority  more  perfectly  recognized  and 
obeyed.^  Its  real  is  also  its  potential  being.  While  it  has 
come,  it  is  yet  always  coming ;  the  idea  exists,  but  its 
realization  is  a  continuous  process.  (3)  It  does  its  work 
silently  and  unseen  ;  grows  without  noise,  like  the  seed 
in  the  ground,  which  swells,  bursts,  and  becomes  a  tree 
great  enough  to  lodge  the  birds  of  the  air.^  And  its  inten- 
sive is  as  silent  as  its  expansive  action.  It  penetrates  and 
transforms  the  man  who  enters  it.  Its  entrance  into  him 
is  his  entrance  into  it,  his  being  born  again,  his  becoming 
as  a  little  child,  the  new  citizen  of  a  new  state."^  (4)  It 
creates  and  requires  righteousness  in  all  its  subjects.  To 
seek  it  is  to  seek  the  righteousness  of  God.^  Where 
righteousness  is  real  the  kingdom  is  realized.  (5)  It  is  the 
possession  and  reward  of  those  who  have  certain  spiritual 
qualities.  "  The  poor  in  spirit,"  the  "  persecuted  for 
righteousness'  sake,"  the  child -like  and  the  simple  are  its 
possessors  and  heirs.^  (6)  It  is  without  local  or  national 
character,  can  have  subjects  anywhere,  has  none  for 
simply  formal  or  hereditary  reasons.^  No  man  belongs 
to  it  simply  because  a  Jew,  or  is  excluded  from  it  simply 
because  a  Gentile.  (7)  It  is  at  once  universal  and  indi- 
vidual, meant  to  be  preached  everywhere  and  to  every 
one ;  ^  to  comprehend  the  race  by  pervading  all  its  units. 
And  (8)  the  universal  is  to  be  an  everlasting  kingdom,  to 
endure  throughout  all  generations.  Heaven  and  earth 
may  perish,  but  it  must  for  evermore  endure. 

We  must  now  attempt  to  formulate  the   idea   of  the 
kingdom.     It  is  in  nature  and  character  heavenly  :  comes 
*  Luke  vi.  20  ;  xvii.  20,  21  ;  Matt.  xx.  i. 
«  Matt.  vi.  10;  xiii.  3-8,  19-23.         3  Ibid.  xiii.  31-33. 

4  Matt,  xviii.  1-3  ;  Luke  xviii.  17  ;  John  iii.  3-5. 

'  Matt.  vi.  33  ;  v.  19,  20.         ^  l\i\^,  y.  3,  10  ;  xviii.  4. 

7  Matt.  viii.  11  ;  xxi.  31  ;  Luke  xiii.  29.        ^  Matt.  xxiv.  14. 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  HEA  VEN.  107 

by  the  will  of  God  being  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven. 
It  is  in  origin  and  aim  Divine:  proceeds  from  God  that  it 
may  fulfil  God's  ends.  Its  being  is  real,  but  its  ends  are 
not  yet  realized,  though  the  realization  is  in  process.  The 
process  is  silent  and  spiritual,  and  the  end  is  the  creation 
of  righteousness  in  the  individual  and  the  race. 

The  idea  includes,  then,  as  an  essential  element,  the 
notion  of  a  reign,  the  reign  of  God  in  men,  and  through 
men  over  mankind.  As  such  it  must  be,  on  the  human 
side,  inner,  invisible.  The  nature  of  the  king  determines 
the  character  of  the  kingdom.  Where  authority  is  legal, 
it  can  employ  legal  processes  and  forms ;  where  it  is 
ethical  and  spiritual,  it  must  be  enforced  through  the  con- 
science and  obeyed  by  the  spirit.  An  invisible  and  moral 
sovereign  implies  an  invisible  and  moral  reign.  The  un- 
seen is  not,  indeed,  the  unknown  God.  He  knows,  but 
does  not  see,  Himself.  We  can  know  though  we  cannot  see 
Him  :  the  heart  can  feel  His  presence,  the  conscience  can 
confess  His  authority.  And  where  it  does  so  righteous- 
ness is  born.  Where  He  is  known  and  obeyed  He  reigns, 
His  kingdom  is  realized. 

But  a  second  element  involved  in  the  idea  is  that  it  is 
a  reign  by  ideals,  by  truths  believed  and  loved.  The  men 
who  enter  and  live  in  the  kingdom  know  God,  believe  the 
truths  personalized  in  His  Son.  And  so,  with  its  sphere 
in  the  spirit  and  truth  as  its  instrument  of  authority  and 
expansion,  it  is  in  its  proper  nature  ideal.  It  is  neither  an 
institution,  nor  capable  of  being  embodied  in  one.  It  can- 
not be  identified  with  the  church.  The  two  are  radically 
dissimilar.  EKKkrjaLa  does,  BaatXela  does  not,  denote  an 
institution  or  structure.  The  kingdom  is  "  righteousness, 
peace,  joy  in  the  Holy  Ghost,"'  but  the  church  is  a 
community,   a  body,  a  building.*     There  may  be  many 

*  Rom.  xiv.  17. 
'  Gal.  i.  2  ;  2  Cor.  i.  i  ;  Ephes.  i.  22,  23  ;  Col.  i.  18 ;  i  Tim.  iii.  15. 


io8  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

churches :  ^  there  is  only  one  kingdon.  The  voluntary 
action  of  men  can  institute  the  former,  but  not  the  latter. 
The  kingdom  created  the  church,  not  the  church  the  king- 
dom. The  parables  that  explain  and  illustrate  the  one 
are  inapplicable  to  the  other.  The  BaaiXeia  was  the 
most,  the  EKKXrjala  the  least  familiar  idea  of  Christ.  Of 
the  first  He  never  ceases  to  speak;  of  the  second  He  speaks 
only  twice ;  *  and  each  time  so  as  to  indicate  its  structural 
or  institutional  character.  The  church  and  the  kingdom 
may  thus  be  more  properly  contrasted  than  compared. 
Only  two  points  of  contrast  can  be  here  noticed. 

I.  The  church 3  has,  the  kingdom  has  not,  a  formal  or 
organized  being.  The  one  must  be  a  more  or  less  elaborate 
organism,  the  other  can  only  live  a  spiritual  and  unem- 
bodied  life.  A  polity  is  as  necessary  to  the  voluntary 
society  we  call  a  church  as  to  the  involuntary  society  we 
call  a  nation.  The  ideals  of  church  polity,  realized  or 
realizable,  are  many;  but  each  has  had,  or  may  have,  its 
counterpart  in  the  state.  There  are,  indeed,  in  each  case 
but  two  great  political  types,  though  each  may  branch  into 
very  dissimilar  forms.  A  state  may  be  either  monarchical 
or  republican.  If  monarchical,  it  may  be  either  autocratic 
or  limited,  imperial  or  constitution9.1.  If  republican,  it 
may  be  either  aristocratic  or  democratic — either  a  republic 
proper,  where  the  authority  is  vested  in  representatives 
elected  by  the  people  ;  or  a  democracy  proper,  where  the 
supreme  authority  is  the  people  in  council  assembled. 
And  the  church,  like  the  state,  may  be  either  a  monarchy 
or  a  republic.     If  the  monarchy  be  autocratic,  it  is,  in 

*  Acts.  ix.  31  ;  XV.  41  ;  Rom.  xvi.  4,  16  ;  i  Cor.  vii.  17. 

'  Malt.  xvi.  18  ;  xviii.  17. 

3  The  term  "  church"  has  indeed  both  a  universal  and  specific  refer- 
ence. But  the  idea  in  both  cases  is  the  same.  It  always  denotes  an 
organized  society.  There  are  obvious  advantages  connected  with  the 
use  of  the  term  in  a  generalized  sense.  It  enables  us  to  deal  with  tha 
general  notion. 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  HE  A  YEN,  109 

ecclesiastical  phraseology,  a  Papacy;  if  limited,  an  Episco- 
pacy. If  the  republic  be  a  representative  aristocracy,  it  is 
Presbyterial ;  if  democratic.  Congregational.  And  so, 
while  a  polity  is  necessary  to  the  church,  it  is  not  a  polity 
of  a  particular  type.  The  church  creates  the  polity,  not 
the  polity  the  church.  It  has  existed,  can  exist,  under 
each  specific  form,  just  as  France  has  been  Legitimist, 
Orleanist,  Imperialist,  and  Republican,  and  remained 
France  still.  Men  may  argue  that  the  one  polity  is  more, 
the  others  are  less,  perfect ;  but  no  man  has  any  right  to 
argue  that  any  one  is  essential  to  the  being  of  the  Christian 
Church. 

While,  however,  we  can  so  describe  and  classify  the 
polities  of  the  church,  we  cannot  attribute  one  to  the 
kingdom.  It  is  without  a  polity,  properly  so  called.  A 
irdKLTeia  implies  both  a  TroXt?  and  iroXlrat,  but  a  ^acnXela 
simply  a  ffaaiXeix;.  The  king  creates  the  kingdom,  but 
the  citizens  the  state  and  its  polity.  And  the  king  here 
is  the  eternal  and  invisible  God,  who  seeks  to  establish  on 
earth  the  reign  of  heaven. 

2.  Men  can  make  and  administer  laws  in  the  church, 
but  not  in  the  kingdom.  The  very  name  of  the  former 
implies  its  power  to  determine  its  own  constitution,  the 
terms  of  communion  or  citizenship,  the  rights  and 
privileges  it  will  grant  to  its  members,  the  duties  and 
services  it  will  require  from  themx.  And  this  power  the 
church  has  always  exercised,  often  with  a  most  rigorous 
will.  It  has  formulated  creeds,  declaring  one  opinion 
orthodox,  another  heretical.  It  has  framed  laws  and 
executed  judgment  on  every  bold  transgressor.  It  judg- 
ments have  been  now  righteous,  now  unrighteous,  often 
pronounced  against  the  evil,  almost  as  often  against  the 
good.  But  in  the  kingdom  of  God  the  authority  is  God's, 
not  man's  ;  its  laws  are  Divine,  administered  from  heaven 
though  obeyed  on  earth.    Exclusion  from  the  church  need 


no  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

not  be  exclusion  from  the  kingdom.  The  excluded  and 
excluding  may  be  both  within  it.  The  man  who  seeks 
or  loves  God's  righteousness  lives  within  God's  kingdom, 
even  though  the  excommunicated  or  the  unknown  of  the 
churches.  The  real  is  not  always  a  conscious  Christian. 
Men  come  from  the  east  and  west  and  sit  down  with 
Abraham  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  has  room  enough 
for  Anselm  and  Abelard,  Pole  and  Parker,  Milton  and 
Rutherford,  Baxter  and  Laud,  Bunyan  and  Ken.  Rival 
churchmen  are  not  rivals  in  the  Divine  kingdom.  Where 
man  ceases  to  make  and  administer  laws  he  must  cease  to 
anathematize  his  brother,  and  humbly  begin  to  speak  the 
praise  of  the  God  whose  grace  he  enjoys,  whose  reign 
he  confesses.  There  he  lives  like  a  little  child,  meekly 
learning  to  be  the  obedient  vassal  of  the  Eternal  King. 

But  while  the  church  and  the  kingdom  thus  differ,  they 
are  most  intimately  related.  The  relation  is  twofold,  (i) 
The  kingdom  creates  the  church,  but  (2)  the  church  exists 
for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom.  The  ideals,  the  Divine  and 
redemptive  truths,  which  actualize  the  reign  of  God,  create 
the  men  and  purposes  constitutive  of  the  church.  It  could 
hardly  be  said  to  exist  in  Christ's  day.  While  He  speaks 
of  the  kingdom  as  present  and  real.  He  speaks  of  the 
church  as  something  still  future ;  not  as  building,  but  as 
to  be  built.'  It  begins  to  exist,  after  His  ascension,  with 
the  first  Christian  community.  Persons  were  necessary  to 
its  existence.  It  was  a  society,  an  association,  of  the  like- 
minded.  But  minds  are  made  alike  by  being  persuaded  to 
think  alike,  and  the  persuasion  came  of  the  truths  that 
were  embodied  in  Christ.  He  was  the  truth,  the  ideal, 
that  made  the  kingdom  impersonated.  His  very  being 
created  it;  but  the  effective  action  of  His  truth  was  needed 
to  create  the  church. 

And  the  created  was  meant  to  serve  the  Creator ;  the 
'  Matt.  xvi.  18  ;  ''  Upon  this  rock  I  will  build  my  church.'* 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  HE  A  VEN,  1 1 1 

church  was  to  promote  the  ends,  to  reahze  the  ideals,  of 
the  kingdom.  If  the  ^aaiXeia  was  steeped  in  Hebrew, 
the  iKK\ri(ria  was  penetrated  with  Greek,  associations. 
Its  sense  is  not  to  be  etymologically  explained;  its  use 
was  too  specific  and  well  defined  to  admit  of  that.  The 
€KK\r)ata  was  the  assembly  of  the  citizens — the  citizen 
assembled  to  ordain  or  administer  laws,  to  transact  the 
business,  maintain  the  being  or  secure  the  well-being  of 
the  state.  And  so  the  church  exists  for  the  kingdom — is, 
as  it  were,  the  society  of  the  enfranchised  organized  to 
further  the  national  weal.  Within  the  one  empire  there 
may  be  many  TroXet?,  and  each  may  have  its  own  TroX^re/a, 
at  once  determined  and  exercised  by  its  own  iKKkrjcrla ; 
but  the  cities,  however  variously  constituted,  are  alike 
members  of  the  state,  united  in  a  common  devotion  to 
imperial  interests,  often  best  promoting  these  by  honour- 
able attention  to  their  own.  So  the  great  ^aaiXeia  rov 
Oeov  is  one,  but  its  TroXet?,  with  their  respective  iKKXrjaiai,, 
are  many.  Yet  the  multitude  does  not  exclude  unity ; 
cannot  so  long  as  loyalty  to  the  kingdom  and  its  ends  is 
common  to  all.  And  without  this  loyalty  the  church  loses 
its  right  to  be.  It  is  not  in  itself  an  end,  but  a  means, 
and  lives  as  it  fulfils  its  purpose.  Its  purpose  is  to  magnify 
its  Creator,  enlarge  the  kingdom,  promote  its  extensive 
and  intensive  growth.  Christ  lives  in  the  church,  in 
and  by  it  reigns  that  He  may  put  all  His  enemies  under 
His  feet,  and  bring  the  time  when  the  kingdom  shall  be 
delivered  up  to  God,  even  the  Father,  that  He  may  be 
all  in  all. 

We  have  only  space  for  a  word  on  the  Ideals  of  the 
kingdom,  its  great  creative  truths.  These  may  be  reduced 
to  two :  the  paternity  of  God  and  the  sonship  of  man. 
God  is  man-like;  man  is  God-like.  The  first  gives  us,  on 
the  Divine  side,  the  grace  that  can  stoop  to  incarnation 
and  sacrifice ;  the  second  gives  us,  on  the  human  side,  the 


112  STUDIES  IN  TBE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

nature  that  makes  restoration  both  possible  and  desirable. 
And  these  were  embodied  in  Christ.  He  was  the  mani- 
fested paternity  of  God  ;  the  realized  sonship  of  man.  In 
Him  the  highest  truths  as  to  God  and  man  were  person- 
alized, made  real  and  active,  living  and  creative  for  earth. 
His  very  being  made  the  kingdom  ;  to  be  was  for  Him 
to  be  both  the  Truth  and  a  King.  And  so,  while  He  was 
king,  the  kingdom  was  God's  ;  the  reign  of  God  through 
and  by  the  Truth  Christ  both  made  and  was. 

The  kingdom,  then,  Christ  instituted  was  sublime  and 
glorious  enough.  While  it  has  only  an  ideal  being,  or 
being  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit,  it  is  creative  of  the  best 
and  noblest  realities  on  earth.  It  has  made  our  churches, 
and  inspired  these  to  do  every  good  work  they  have  accom- 
plished. It  is  the  spring,  too,  of  our  philanthropies,  our 
ambitions  to  be  and  to  do  good.  While  it  can  be  embodied 
in  no  institution,  it  forms  and  animates  every  institution 
that  promotes  the  common  weal.  The  state  feels  it  in  all 
its  higher  legislation,  aims,  and  endeavours.  Art  in  all 
its  branches  pulses  with  an  enthusiasm  it  creates,  is 
charmed  by  visions  it  sends,  and  fascinated  by  ideals  it 
raises,  making  our  perfect  seem  imperfect  still.  It  is,  too, 
the  one  power  creative  of  righteousness.  It  seeks  the 
good  of  the  race  by  seeking  the  good  of  all  its  individuals  ; 
blesses  the  mass  through  the  units  that  compose  it.  The 
rewards  of  the  kingdom  are  the  virtues  of  the  kingdom, 
the  holiness  that  is  happiness,  the  graces  that  adorn  the 
saints  of  God.  And  it  does  its  glorious  work  without 
ceasing,  making  earth  more  like  heaven,  man  more  like 
God.  While  it  lives  He  reigns,  and  while  He  reigns  man 
need  fear  no  victory  of  evil,  either  over  himself  or  his  kind ; 
may  rest  assured  that  the  Divine  Father  who  guides  the 
world,  will  guide  it,  through  its  shadow  as  through  its 
sunshine,  to  the  calm  and  glory  of  an  eternal  day. 


VII. 

GALILEE,  JUD^A,  SAMARIA. 

The  preaching  of  the  kingdom  was  a  creative  act ;  the 
word  of  Jesus  instituted  His  reign.  His  simple  and 
modest  means  stood  in  curious  contrast  to  His  extra- 
ordinary and  sublime  ends.  His  mission  was  to  create  a 
new  society  in  the  heart  of  the  old,  a  new  that  was  to 
reform  the  old  by  reforming  its  members.  The  man  was 
allowed  to  live  where  he  had  lived  before,  within  the  old 
state  and  obedient  to  its  laws ;  but  he  was  to  become  a 
new  man,  the  seed  of  a  new  society.  The  citizens  were 
not  to  be  changed  through  the  state,  but  the  state  through 
the  citizens.  Ancient  polities  and  institutions  were  not 
directly  assailed  and  overturned,  but  the  renewal  of  the 
spirits  that  create  law  and  order  was  to  make  all  things 
new.  And  this  stupendous  work  was  to  be  done  by 
simple  unadorned  speech,  the  telling  of  a  simple  history 
by  simple  men.  And  Jesus  believed  that  His  end  was 
attainable,  and  could  be  attained  by  His  means.  In  this 
faith  He  became  a  Preacher,  the  Preacher  of  the  kingdom; 
and  His  Word  was  creative  in  the  very  degree  that  it  was 
tender  and  quiet.  The  Christ  and  the  Baptist  were,  as 
Preachers,  the  antithesis  of  each  other.  John  had  roused 
the  nation,  had  made  the  banks  of  the  Jordan  as  populous 
as  a  city,  had  forced  the  proud  and  priestly  as  well  as  the 
simple  and  sinful  to  seek  his  baptism  and  confess  their 
sins.  But  Jesus  avoided  crowds  and  commotion,  stole  as 
it  were  into  obscurity,  lived  simply  among  simple  people 


114         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

in  a  province  remote  from  the  city  and  temple  of  His  race, 
only  now  and  then,  as  at  a  Feast,  emerging  on  the  greater 
stage  they  supplied.  Yet  this  quiet  and  unobtrusive  work 
was  soon  perceived  by  friends  and  foes  alike  to  be  more 
radical  and  penetrative  than  John's,  more  destructive  of 
the  old  and  creative  of  the  new.  Action  that  at  first 
seemed  so  obscure  as  to  be  wasted  was  proved  by  the  result 
to  be  work  too  deep  to  be  audible,  too  eternal  to  be  visible, 
at  the  foundations  of  the  new  society,  the  City  of  God. 

It  seems  curious,  inconsistent,  indeed,  with  the  Messianic 
mission  and  claims,  that  Jesus  should  choose  Galilee  as  the 
scene  of  His  first  and  creative  ministry.  Jerusalem  appeared 
its  natural  field.  It  was  the  city  of  David,  the  centre  of 
the  nation,  the  symbol  of  its  unity,  the  home  of  its  schools, 
the  seat  of  its  worship,  the  abode  of  its  priesthood.  Galilee 
was  a  despised  province,  **  the  circle  of  the  Gentiles :  "  out 
of  it  arose  no  prophet,  from  it  no  Messiah  could  come.  To 
belong  to  it,  to  live  in  it,  was  to  allow  as  it  were  a  priori 
disproof  of  His  claims.  There,  too,  appreciative  spirits 
were  few,  an  audience  of  the  cultured  impossible.  To 
seek  Galilee  was  like  courting  defeat,  inviting  the  contempt 
of  Judaea,  surrounding  Himself  with  men  too  dull-witted 
to  understand  His  words  or  quicken  and  gladden  His  soul 
with  the  sympathy  possible  to  men  of  trained  and  nimble 
minds.  But  the  Wisdom  that  justifies  her  children  justi- 
fied the  choice  of  Jesus,  proved  that  it  was,  as  He  was,  of 
God. 

Judaea  and  Jerusalem  had  been  the  worst  of  all  fields  for 
the  early  ministry  of  Jesus.  It  had  made  conflict  precede 
and  accompany  creation.  There  were  serene  depths  in 
His  own  spirit  which  the  conflict  could  not  have  disturbed, 
but  it  would  have  troubled  and  bewildered  the  simpler 
spirits  He  wished  to  form.  Old  societies  have  an  immense 
power  of  repression,  are  easily  moved  to  a  jealousy  that 
as  easily  glides  into  revenge.     It  had  been  ill  had  His 


GALILEE,  JUD^A,  SAMARIA,  115 

career  ended  ere  it  had  well  begun,  had  He  gone  to  seek 
His  final  sorrow  and  suffering  instead  of  leaving  them  to 
seek  Him.  Amid  the  peace  His  early  obscurity  afforded 
He  could  meeten  and  mature  His  Spirit  for  the'  Passion 
which  was  to  be  at  once  supreme  sacrifice  and  supreme 
glory.  There,  too,  He  could  best  form  His  society  out  of 
men  who  combined  the  simplicity  of  childhood  with  the 
strength  of  manhood.  The  men  who  incarnate  the  genius 
of  an  ancient  polity  or  state  are  brittle  rather  than  malle- 
able, tend  so  to  break  as  to  wound  the  hand  that  attempts 
to  fashion  them  into  finer  forms  and  for  nobler  uses.  The 
men  who  can  be  so  made  as  to  become  makers  are  men 
who  unite  the  open  sense  and  innocent  wonder  of  the  child 
with  the  high  faith  and  resolute  will  of  the  man.  Official 
or  officious  teachers  are  seldom  made  of  teachable  stuff. 
The  soul  long  fed  on  subtleties  becomes  too  absorbed  in 
the  distinctions  to  care  for  the  truths  and  realities  of  life. 
The  priests  and  scribes  of  Jerusalem  were  too  thoroughly 
possessed  by  the  old  to  be  readily  penetrated  by  the  new. 
The  simple  Galileans  were  not  mismade,  only  unmade, 
men,  waiting  but  the  coming  of  One  who  could  breathe 
into  them  the  breath  of  life  to  rise  up  quick  and  quickening 
spirits.  Then,  too,  the  influence  of  Jesus  increased  in  in- 
tensity with  the  narrowing  of  the  circle  within  which  He 
moved.  The  more  extensive  the  stage  the  smaller  His 
power.  He  did  not  need  to  make  many,  but  to  make 
thoroughly.  The  many  only  touched  had  done  nothing, 
but  the  few  transformed  could  reform  the  world.  His  pre- 
sence, where  understood,  was  power.  His  person  and 
word  stood  in  an  exegetical  relation  to  each  other,  were 
mutually  illustrative  and  explanatory.  But  to  be  so  they 
needed  to  be  seen  in  their  ideal  relations,  living  together 
in  happy  and  beautiful  unity,  undisturbed  by  the  presence 
of  jealous  and  disputatious  Jews.  And  Galilee  allowed 
the  ideai  relations  to  be  realized.     While  He  waited  for 


ii6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LITE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  Passion  that  came  towards  Him  with  awful  inevitable 
step,  He  made  the  meaning  of  Himself,  His  truth,  and 
His  mission  penetrate  and  possess  His  simple-minded 
disciples.  The  obscure  but  great  ministry  of  those  days 
not  only  created  the  new  society,  but  has  been  the  regula- 
tive force  in  its  history,  as  fruitful  of  the  principles  that 
have  commanded  as  the  Passion  of  the  motives  and  emo- 
tions that  have  inspired  the  church.  Its  influence  lives 
in  our  Synoptic  Gospels.  Its  memory  was  so  potent  as 
to  eclipse  the  ministry  in  Judaea,  and  a  fourth  and  later 
Evangelist  was  needed  to  tell  the  story  of  those  visits  to 
Jerusalem  that  the  authors  of  the  earliest  Christian 
Memorahilia  had  forgotten  in  tlieir  vivid  recollection  of  the 
life  lived  and  words  spoken  in  Galilee. 

His  earliest  ministry  in  Galilee  may  be  said  to  have 
been  private  and  tentative,  a  preliminary  or  prophetic 
ministry.  It  grew  out  of  the  Baptist's.  John's  preaching 
had  sifted  his  hearers,  had  determined  and  revealed  their 
spiritual  affinities.  The  men  of  Jerusalem  had  soon  with- 
drawn from  him.  What  would  not  be  absorbed  into 
Judaism  they  could  not  tolerate,  and  so,  while  they  began 
by  accepting  the  baptism,  they  ended  by  rejecting  the 
Baptist.  He  had  a  devil,  as  had  every  one  too  generous  to 
be  a  Jew.  But  in  the  men  from  Galilee  he  had  awakened 
a  new  spirit,  a  grand  consciousness  of  human  evil  and 
Divine  good.  The  spirit  he  had  awakened  he  could  not 
satisfy.  It  wanted  more  than  he  could  give — the  baptism 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  fire.  And  so  an  elect  circle 
waited  near  John,  held  there  by  the  Divine  hunger  of 
their  spirits.  And  they  soon  found  Him  for  whom  they 
waited,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  Son  of  Joseph.  There  is 
no  finer  proof  possible  of  the  power  and  spirit  that  lived  in 
the  Baptist  than  the  quality  of  the  men  he  quickened,  but 
could  not  satisfy.  Peter  and  John,  Andrew,  Philip,  and 
Nathanael,  were  not  ordinary  persons,  were  men  of  the 


GALILEE,  yUD^A,  SAMARIA.  117 

high  creative  order.  They  were  the  atoms  that,  with  all 
their  spiritual  affinities  awakened  but  unsatisfied,  only 
waited  the  coming  of  the  Word  to  crystallize  into  the  New 
Society.  With  them  Jesus  returned  into  Gaiilee,  and 
*'  manifested  forth  His  glory  "  as  they  could  bear  it.  It 
was  a  period  of  home  ministry;  on  His  part  a  making 
known,  on  theirs  a  coming  to  know.  The  Fourth  Evan- 
gelist allows  us  a  glimpse  into  this  period,  shows  us  Jesus 
by  His  presence  at  a  marriage  making  the  heart  of  man 
glad  and  the  home  of  man  holy,  creating  the  spirit  at  once 
of  belief  and  obedience.'  Cana  was  the  scene  of  His 
first  miracle,  but  it  was  a  miracle  of  the  home,  not  of  the 
synagogue  or  the  market-place.  His  ministry  was  only 
beginning,  had  not  yet  begun. 

Christianity,  like  Christ,  was  educated  in  Galilee,  but 
was  born  in  Judaea.  The  new  faith,  as  a  new  faith  super- 
sessive  of  the  old,  could  have  as  its  appropriate  birthplace 
only  Jerusalem.  The  Christ  could  proclaim  His  kinghood 
only  in  "  the  city  of  the  great  King."  John  was  the  one 
Evangelist  who  saw  the  meaning  of  the  event,  and  re- 
corded it.  When  "  the  Jews'  passover  was  at  hand,  Jesus 
went  up  to  Jerusalem."  *  There  as  a  boy  He  had  woke 
into  consciousness  of  His  mission  ;  there  as  a  man  He  was 
to  inaugurate  His  reign.  Feast  and  city,  time  and  place, 
were  alike  significant.  As  the  Greeks  at  Olympia,  the 
Jews  at  Jerusalem  realized  their  unity,  lived  as  a  people 
unified  by  a  common  faith  and  a  common  descent  and 
history.  Then,  as  now,  Jews  were  everywhere — merchants 
and  philosophers  in  Alexandria,  scholars  and  teachers  in 
Athens,  ministers  of  virtue  and  vice,  diplomatists,  traders, 
servants,  interpreters  at  Rome,  colonists  in  Gaul  and 
Spain,  settlers  in  the  towns  of  Syria,  in  the  isles  of  Greece, 
in  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates,  beside  the  once  hated 
streams  of  Babel.  But  the  Jew  had  then  what  he  has  not 
»  John  ii.  i-ii.  ■  Ibid.  ii.  13. 


ii8  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

now — national  being,  a  city  that  incorporated  and  sym- 
bolized his  religious,  if  not  his  political  ideal.  And  so, 
though  he  forsook  he  did  not  forget  Zion,  looked  with 
longing  eyes  to  the  city  where  God  dwelt,  which  the  deeds 
of  his  fathers,  the  songs  of  his  faith,  the  words  of  his 
prophets,  had  so  consecrated  and  glorified.  And  thus  the 
scattered  sons  of  Israel  loved  to  come  from  far,  and  while 
they  stood  within  Jerusalem,  become  for  one  blissful  day 
oblivious  of  their  mercenary  and  down-trodden  present,  by 
becoming  conscious  of  their  glorious  past,  and  hopeful  of 
a  splendid  future.  No  passover  came  without  bringing 
troops  of  pilgrims  yearning  to  see — 

The  Holy  City  lift  high  her  towers. 
And  higher  yet  the  glorious  Temple  rear 
Her  pile,  far  off  appearing  like  a  mount 
Of  alabaster,  topped  with  golden  spires. 

The  Temple  was  not  simply  the  expression  of  the 
nation's  faith,  but  the  symbol  of  its  spirit  and  epitome  of 
its  history.  The  one  sanctuary  had  helped  to  create  the 
one  faith,  had  contributed  in  an  almost  equal  degree  to  the 
spread  of  Hebraism  and  the  growth  of  Judaism.  It  served 
the  former  well  at  first,  but  the  latter  most  and  last.  The 
Temple  may  indeed  be  regarded  as,  while  the  creation  of 
prophetic  monotheism,  the  creator  of  Judaic  sacerdotalism. 
If  it  did  not  form  the  priesthood,  it  greatly  promoted  the 
formation  of  a  priestly  caste ;  tended  to  decrease  the  spiri- 
tual by  increasing  the  sensuous  elements  in  Mosaism  ;  to 
turn  men's  minds  from  thinking  that  God  was  best  served 
by  righteousness  to  thinking  that  He  was  best  served  by 
sacrifices  and  ceremonies.  The  Temple  helped  at  once 
to  fulfil  and  to  defeat  the  prophetic  ideal :  to  fulfil  it  by 
realizing  the  faith  in  one  God,  to  defeat  it  by  localizing 
Jehovah.  The  Deity  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  was  the  one 
and  universal  God,  but  the  God  of  the  Jewish  Temple  was 


GALILEE,  yUDyEA,  SAMARIA.  119 

only  a  magnified  and  sublimed  tribal  deity.  If  there  was 
only  one  God  He  must  be  the  God  of  all  men ;  but  a  God 
who  could  be  worshipped  only  in  one  place  and  by  one 
people  remained  their  God.  And  this  difference"  involved 
another :  the  universal  was  an  ethical  conception,  the  par- 
ticular a  sensuous  and  sacerdotal.  To  the  prophets  the 
supreme  matter  was  God,  and  the  obedience  He  demanded ; 
but  to  the  priesthood,  worship  conducted  in  proper  form 
by  proper  persons.  The  conflict  of  these  opposite  and  con- 
tradictory tendencies  lasted  through  several  centuries,  and 
the  Jewish  Temple  represented  the  victory  of  the  second, 
a  universal  religion  localized  by  a  tribal  and  inflexible 
sacerdotalism. 

We  can  understand,  then,  how  the  Temple  might  be  to 
a  mind  like  Christ's  at  once  a  pleasure  and  an  offence. 
The  symbolical  significance  might  please,  but  its  actual 
state  would  pain.  It  was  a  symbol  of  the  highest  spiritual 
realities,  God's  search  after  man,  man's  search  after  God; 
of  the  heroic  struggles  that  had  created  the  first  mono- 
theism, the  mother  of  all  the  rest.  But  as  a  place  it  was 
the  scene  of  a  worship  that  had  extinguished  religion.  The 
zeal  for  ritual  was  everywhere ;  men  could  not  get  to  God 
for  priests  and  sacrifices,  were  so  beset  by  formal  laws  and 
ordinances  that  ethical  obedience  was  impossible.  Yet 
the  most  exacting  ceremonialism  is  always  most  accom- 
modating—exacts scrupulous  observance  of  its  rites,  but 
supplies  facile  access  to  the  means.  The  worshipper  had 
no  need  to  neglect  any  form,  or  omit  any  sacrifice ;  the  in- 
struments and  articles  of  worship  stood  waiting  to  be  pur- 
chased. If  he  wished  to  sacrifice,  he  had  a  choice  of 
beasts — sheep,  oxen,  doves — could  select  according  to  his 
purpose  or  his  means.  If  he  came  with  the  stamped 
money  of  Caesar,  he  could  exchange  it  for  the  unstamped 
sacred  shekel,  that  nothing  with  any  sign  or  image  might 
be   presented   to   God.      He   entered  the  Temple  of  his 


I20  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

fathers  through  a  market,  where  he  bought  the  means  of 
rightly  approaching  and  worshipping  their  God. 

Now,  if  we  would  understand  Christ's  mind  and  emotions 
in  presence  of  this  scene  of  praise  through  purchase,  we 
must  do  it  through  His  saying,  "  Make  not  My  Father's 
house  a  house  of  exchange."  ^  The  phrase  "  My  Father's 
house"  expresses  His  ideal  of  the  place  and  its  purpose: 
it  is  where  parent  and  child  may  meet  each  other,  where 
the  ftlial  may  commune  with  the  paternal  spirit,  not  alone, 
but  in  the  home,  amid  its  loved  and  trusted  kin.  Ihe 
phrase  "  a  house  of  exchange  "  expresses  His  idea  of  the 
actual  scene,  what  made  it  so  direct  and  painful  a  contra- 
diction to  His  ideal.  Honest  merchandize  He  did  not 
condemn.  What  He  condemned  was  not  simply  the  in- 
trusion of  merchandize  into  His  *'  Father's  house,"  but  its 
attempt  to  regulate  and  express  the  relations  between 
Father  and  child.  It  first  depraved,  and  then  destroyed, 
the  filial  spirit.  It  was  fatal  to  the  pure  and  delicate 
affection,  the  soft  and  gentle  love,  that  made  the  home  of 
God  the  best  home  of  man.  It  was  the  corporate  expres- 
sion of  the  cardinal  sin  of  Judaism,  the  reduction  of  man's 
worship  of  God  to  a  service  by  acts  formal  and  artificial, 
through  instruments  and  articles  sensuous,  external, 
purchasable. 

The  cleansing  of  the  Temple  is  an  event  that  has  been 
provocative  of  much  criticism  and  discussion.  Paulus, 
true  to  his  not  very  rational  naturalism,  reduced  it  to 
what  was  little  else  than  a  popular  tumult  led  by  Jesus. 
Strauss,  in  his  first  Leben,  explained  it  as  a  myth  sug- 
gested by  Malachi  iii.  1-3.  Bruno  Bauer  made  merry 
over  it  as  the  evidently  fictitious  story  of  a  free  fight,  in 
which,  had  it  really  occurred,  Jesus  would  have  been 
certain  to  find  the  dealers  in  sheep  and  doves  and  the 
money  -  changers  more  than  a  match  for  Him.  But  in 
*  John  ii.  16. 


GALILEE,  JUDjEA,  SAMARIA.  121 

truth  the  event  is  intrinsically  one  of  the  most  probable. 
It  had  a  sufBcient  reason,  and  was  in  no  way  inconsistent 
with  the  character  of  Jesus.  Severity  is  but  a  form  of 
gentleness — is  gentleness  become  strenuous  against  the 
evil  and  injurious  through  its  love  of  the  good  and  the 
injured.  A  character  incapable  of  indignation  is  destitute 
of  righteousness,  without  the  will  to  give  adequate  ex- 
pression to  its  moral  judgments.  Here  there  was  almost 
the  worst  possible  perversion  of  the  holiest  things,  an 
offence  the  conscience  would  condemn  in  the  proportion  to 
its  purity.  The  emotions  awakened  in  the  mind  of  Christ 
by  the  conflict  of  the  ideal  and  the  real  could  not  have 
been  more  strongly,  and  therefore  more  fitly,  expressed. 
Then,  too,  the  act  was  finally  intelligible  to  a  Hebrew,  an 
act  of  splendid  loyalty  to  his  God.  The  man  who  was 
zealous  for  God  could  not  allow  His  house  or  His  name  to 
be  profaned.  The  prophet  but  asserted  his  inalienable 
right  when  he  commanded  worship  to  be  reformed,  the 
Temple  to  be  purified.  Christ  is  here  but  resurgent 
Hebraism  declaring  in  brave  and  expressive  acts  the 
doom  of  apostate  Judaism. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  matter,  present  to  the 
mind  alike  of  Christ  and  His  Evangelist.  The  Jews  ask, 
**  What  sign  showest  thou  unto  us,  seeing  that  thou  doest 
these  things  ?  "  They  do  not  absolutely  deny  His  right  to 
do  what  He  had  done,  they  only  demand  His  warrant,  by 
what  authority.  Now  the  remarkable  thing  is  the  answer 
of  Christ,  "  Destroy  this  temple,  and  in  three  days  I  will 
raise  it  up."  This  answer  explains  His  act,  shows  it  to 
have  been  to  His  own  mind,  as  later  to  John's,  symbolical. 
The  Temple  was  the  type  of  the  ancient  worship, 
embodied  and  represented  Judaism.  To  destroy  it  was 
to  abolish  the  system  it  represented.  As  it  was  the  type 
of  the  old  faith  Christ  was  the  type  of  the  new.  He  was 
the  true  ideal  temple  —  in  Him  God  was  manifested, 
9 


(22  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

through  Him  man  found  God.  He  was  the  tabernacle  of 
God  with  men,  the  personalized  Divine  presence.^  Here, 
then,  were  the  false  and  the  true,  the  sensuous  and  the 
spiritual,  the  depraved  type  and  the  perfect  reality,  facing 
each  other;  and  Jesus  says,  "Destroy  this  temple — the 
whole  ancient  system  as  here  incorporated  and  symbolized 
— and  in  three  days  I  will  create  a  new  and  permanent 
form  for  the  eternal  truth  that  had  here  a  transitory  type. 
The  destruction  is  to  be  your  act,  not  mine.  I  am  not 
come  to  destroy  the  law  and  the  prophets,  but  to  fulfil 
them.  My  death  may  seem  to  you  an  expedient  necessary 
to  save  the  nation,  but  what  you  mean  to  save  the  nation 
will  really  destroy  it.  In  three  days  I  will  make  it 
evident  that  the  Temple  is  superseded,  that  Judaism  is 
doomed,  the  reign  of  the  letter  over  and  the  reign  of  the 
spirit  come.  The  holy  city,  the  New  Jerusalem,  shall 
then  come  down  from  God,  and  its  Temple  shall  be  the 
Lord  God  Almighty  and  the  Lamb." 

The  saying  explains  the  prominence  John  gives  to  the 
incident.  It  was  to  his  mind  the  inauguration  of  the  new 
economy,  the  explicit  claim  on  Christ's  part  to  be  the 
true  temple  of  God,  the  heart  of  the  new  religion.  The 
impression  made  on  him  by  the  scene  and  the  saying 
seems  to  live  in  his  awed  and  frequent  references  to  the 
temple  or  tabernacle  of  God  with  men.  And  the  claim 
appears  to  have  impressed  other  minds  almost  as  much 
as  his.  Two  significant  things  he  mentions  ;  first,  that 
many  believed  on  Christ ;  and  next,  that  He  did  not  com- 
mit Himself  to  them.  The  belief  was  sensuous  rather 
than  spiritual,  due  more  to  miracles  seen  than  to  truths 
understood.  And  in  such  faith  Jesus  did  not  confide. 
The  men  who  gave  it  He  did  not  receive  into  His  own 
inner  circle.  Those  who  stood  there  must  believe  in 
Himself  rather  than  His  works.  John  happily  illustrates 
*  Johni.  14;   cf.  Rev.  xxi.  3,  22. 


GALILEE,  JUD^A,  SAMARIA.  123 

both  points  by  a  person.  Nicodemus  was  the  type  of  a 
man  who  believed  because  of  the  miracles,  and  who  was, 
however  well-meaning,  anything  but  a  man  to  be  trusted. 
He  is  indeed  exceptional — the  one  Pharisee  and  ruler  who 
honestly  seeks  to  be  instructed  by  Christ.  But  while  he 
was  discontented  with  the  past,  he  cannot  quite  break 
with  it.  The  prejudices  of  a  life  are  hard  to  conquer,  but 
the  coarse  yet  subtle  persecutions  of  society  are  still 
harder  to  bear.  Nicodemus  was  stronger  than  the  first, 
but  weaker  than  the  second  ;  and  Jesus  speaks  to  him  as 
one  weak  while  strong,  who  believed  the  miracles  but  did 
not  trust  their  Worker.  The  discourse  was,  while  par- 
ticular, universal,  while  addressed  to  the  man,  addressed 
to  him  as  a  representative  of  a  class,  in  a  sense  of  the 
race. 

It  is  one  of  the  notes  and  peculiarities  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  that  the  reflections  of  the  historian  often  so  blend 
with  the  discourses  of  Christ  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
tell  where  the  latter  end  and  the  former  begin.  It  is  so 
eminently  here.  The  discourse  of  Christ  ends  most  prob- 
ably with  Verse  15,  and  Verses  16-21  express  the  ex- 
plicative thoughts  of  the  Evangelist.  Yet  his  mind  has 
become  so  completely  possessed  with  the  Spirit  of  his 
Master,  that  his  words  are  as  the  words  of  Christ.  The 
commentary  so  finely  harmonizes  with  the  discourse  as  to 
make  it  into  a  more  perfect  whole,  a  discourse  not  simply 
to  Nicodemus,  but  to  the  Christian  ages.  It  may  be 
necessary  to  exhibit  the  two  sections  in  their  relations  to 
each  other,  and  to  the  historical  and  ideal  elements  in  the 
person  of  Christ. 

The  discourse  proper  falls  into  two  parts :  the  first 
(Verses  3-8)  explains  the  condition  of  entrance  into  the 
kingdom,  and  this  condition  at  once  explains  the  nature 
of  the  kingdom  and  is  explained  by  it.  The  kingdom  is  a 
kingdom  of  the  Spirit,  and  the  birth  into  it  is  a  spiritual 


124  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

birth,  an  effect  whose  cause  is  the  ubiquitous,  silently 
ever-operating  Divine  Spirit,  whose  historical  symbol  or 
expression  is  "  the  water"  that  purifies  and  renews.  The 
second  part  (Verses  10-15)  explains  Christ's  relation  to 
the  kingdom  and  to  the  men  who  seek  it.  If  men  enter  it, 
it  must  be  by  faith  in  Himself — which  is  but  the  intellectual 
and  personal  side  of  the  change  that  had  been  before  de- 
scribed on  its  spiritual  and  social — but  it  must  be  abso- 
lute faith  in  Him  as  one  who  testifies  of  what  He  knows, 
as  a  Speaker  who  knows  heaven  as  earth,  and  has 
descended  that  He  might  speak  with  the  authority  of  one 
who  had  a  celestial  as  well  as  a  terrestrial  presence.  And 
He  who  requires  such  absolute  faith  can  do  so  only  as 
the  creative  spiritual  centre  of  the  world,  the  spiritual 
pole,  as  it  were,  of  humanity,  drawing  all  eyes  and  hearts 
towards  Him,  that  He  may  illuminate  all  with  His  light 
and  gladden  with  His  love.  The  discourse  thus  speaks  to 
the  deepest  needs  of  Nicodemus.  He  is  but  a  seeker 
after  the  things  of  the  senses.  What  he  needs  is  a 
change  of  the  spirit,  entrance  as  a  trustful  child  into  a 
new  society  which  he  is  too  sensuous  to  perceive.  And  to 
enter,  it  is  not  miracles  he  must  regard,  it  is  their 
Worker.  The  Christian  society  is  constituted  by  faith  in 
Christ. 

The  commentary,  again,  falls,  like  the  discourse,  into 
two  parts,  the  first  being  an  explicit  statement  of  truths 
implied  or  indicated  in  the  discourse ;  the  second,  an 
exposition  of  the  principles  that  govern  the  conflict  of 
light  and  darkness,  love  and  hate,  which  the  gospel  is 
written  to  pourtray.  The  former  part  (Verses  16-18) 
explains  the  ideal  cause  and  design  of  Christ's  historical 
appearance ;  the  cause  being  God's  love  to  the  world, 
the  design,  most  agreeable  to  the  cause,  "  that  the  world 
through  Him  might  be  saved."  The  latter  part  (Verses 
19-21)  explains  the  real  or  historical  results  of  His  appear- 


GALILEE,  JUD^A,  SAMARIA,  125 

ance;  on  the  one  side,  men  so  loving  the  darkness  as  to 
hate  and  refuse  the  light ;  on  the  other,  men  so  loving 
the  light  as  to  seek  it  that  they  may  live,  and  be  seen  to 
live,  in  God.  The  two  sections  thus  blend  into  a  fine 
unity,  constitute,  w^hen  combined,  a  discourse  which  pro- 
gresses from  the  idea  of  the  kingdom  and  birth  into  it 
through  the  King  to  the  causes  and  results  of  His  his- 
torical appearance,  the  unequal  though  long  protracted 
conflict  of  Divine  love  and  human  hate. 

In  this  discourse  and  commentary  it  has  been  con- 
tended that  there  are  ideas  strange  to  the  Synoptics 
and  their  Christ,  peculiar  to  the  Fourth  Evangelist,  late  in 
origin,  and  unhistorical  in  character.  The  most  foreign 
and  offensive  of  these  ideas  is  the  second  birth  ;  but  it  is 
only  a  more  radical  and  expressive  formula  for  a  most 
characteristic  thought  of  the  Synoptic  Christ,  entering  into 
the  kingdom  by  becoming  a  little  child/  The  Apos- 
tolical Epistles,  too,  prove  that  the  idea  had  so  pene- 
trated early  Christian  thought  ^  as  to  be  explicable  only  as 
a  creation  of  its  common  Creator.  The  idea  expressed  in 
the  phrase  *'  born  of  the  Spirit  "  stands  in  fine  harmony 
with  John's  prophecy,  "  He  shall  baptize  you  with  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  as  with  the  later  notion  of  baptism  in  its 
name.3  The  commentary,  too,  is  as  distinctive  of  John 
as  the  discourse  of  Jesus.  **  Only  begotten  "  occurs  in 
his  characteristic  sense.'^  Love  and  God,  light  and  God, 
are  associated  as  he  likes  to  associate  them  ^ — the  divinest 
qualities  in  God  used  to  explain  at  once  his  antagonism 
to  the  ignorance  and  the  evil  of  man,  and  his  strenuous 
service  of  man's  highest  good. 

*  Matt,  xviii.  3  ;  Mark  x.  15  ;   Luke  xviii.  17. 

'  Titus  iii.  5  ;  i  Peter  i.  3,  ii.  2  ;  i  Cor.  iv.  15  ;  Gal.  iv.  29 ;  Phil.  10 ; 
I  John  ii.  29  ;  iii.  9  ;  v.  i,  4,  8. 

3  Matt.  iii.  II  ;  John  i.  33  ;  Matt,  xxviii.  19  ;  Acts  i.  5  ;  xi.  16. 

4  John  i.  14,  18 ;  i  John  iv.  9. 

s  John  i.  4,  5,  7-9  ;  i  John  i.  5 ;   iv.  8-10. 


126  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

Jerusalem  was  not  to  be  the  scene  of  Christ's  ministry. 
It  was  tried  and  rejected.  Yet  with  a  noble  love  and 
loyalty  to  the  queenly  cit}^  He  lingered  in  her  neigh- 
bourhood, speaking  His  truth,  baptizing^  men  who  came 
to  confess  their  sins  and  be  instructed.  But  He  could 
not  remain  in  Judaea;  Pharisaic  jealousy  was  too  strong, 
threatened  premature  conllict.  So  He  "  departed  again 
into  Galilee,"  and  He  "  must  needs  go  through  Samaria."^ 
The  necessity  was  not  geographical,  but  ethical,  was 
rooted  in  His  nature  and  mission,  was  not  caused  by  His 
place.  The  story  of  the  Samaritan  journey  is  symbolical. 
John  tells  it  as  an  allegory,  while  a  history.  The  two 
were  to  him,  where  Christ's  action  was  concerned, 
identical — the  real  ever  representing  an  ideal.  Strauss 
regarded  it  as  a  myth  suggested  by  the  beautiful  tale  of 
the  meeting  of  Jacob  and  Rachel  at  the  well.  The 
woman  was  the  representative  of  an  unclean  people ;  the 
five  husbands  represented  their  five  idols,  and  the  sixth  their 
illegitimate  worship  of  Jehovah.  Hengstenberg  and  Keim 
are  here  in  curious  agreement  with  Strauss,  with  these  dif- 
ferences, that  the  former  of  course  rejects  the  mythical 
theory,  while  the  latter  substitutes  religions  for  idols.  But 
the  narrative  is  too  finely  and  minutely  historical  to  be 
an  allegory  in  their  sense,  and  their  interpretation  fails  to 
explain  its  most  significant  touches.  The  cardinal  point 
of  their  allegory  is  but  a  secondary  incident  in  the  story, 
and  obtained  by  the  sacrifice  of  its  essential  symbolism. 
For  there  is  here  a  real  enough  symbolism,  looking  out 
from  the  double  senses  in  the  "  water,"  "the  well,"  "the 
mountain,"  "  the  harvest."  What  it  is  we  may  best  dis- 
cover through  the  feelings  that  must  have  been  in  the 
mind  of  Christ.  When  He  retired  from  Judaea  two 
thoughts  must  have  possessed  Him — the  evil  of  the  hate- 
ful formalism  of  the  Jews,  and  the  failure  of  His  ministry 
*  John  iii.  22  ;  iv.  i,  2.  '  Ibid.  iv.  3,  5. 


GALILEE,  JUD^A,  34i^4^fA.         /     127 

in  Jerusalem.  Judaism  had  localized  and  concealed  God  ; 
though  a  universal  God,  He  could  be  found  only  at 
Jerusalem;  though  a  righteous  God,  He  could  be  wor- 
shipped only  by  sensuous  forms  and  ceremonies.  And 
these  ideas  of  God  stood  in  so  radical  antithesis  to  His 
that  they  had  caused  the  failure  of  His  mission,  made  the 
Jews  not  only  disinclined  to  hear  Him,  but  unable  to 
understand  the  splendid  significance  of  His  words.  But 
now  this  narrative  supplies  the  contrast  that  at  once 
illustrates  and  defines  His  truth  and  His  mission.  God 
is  proved  to  be  universal  and  ethical,  capable  of  being 
worshipped  anywhere,  only  to  be  worshipped  in  spirit  and 
in  truth.  And  the  mission  which  establishes  this  truth 
is  just  in  its  spring-time,  but  it  is  a  spring  which  not  only 
had  the  promise  of  harvest,  but  is  equal  to  it.  Though 
Judaea  is  behind,  the  world  is  before  ;  if  the  one  is  a 
proud  and  exclusive  city,  the  other  is  a  field  ripe  to  the 
sickle. 

It  is  strange  that  Christ  should  often  speak  His  most 
remarkable  words  to  the  least  remarkable  persons.  Here 
is  a  woman  who  for  one  splendid  moment  emerges  from  the 
unknown,  stands  as  in  a  blaze  of  living  light,  and  vanishes 
into  the  unknown  again.  But  while  she  stands  she  is 
immortalized,  the  moment  becomes  an  Eternal  Now,  in 
which  Christ  and  she  face  each  other  for  ever.  He  giving 
and  she  receiving  truths  the  world  can  never  allow  to  die. 
For  the  woman  is  a  type,  a  particular  that  expresses  an 
universal.  She  represents  heathenism,  the  world  waiting 
for  the  truths  Christ  was  bringing.  And  what  He  gives  to 
her  He  gives  to  the  race  ;  what  she  receives  she  receives 
for  mankind.  In  that  woman  man  lived,  and  in  her  became 
conscious  of  the  truth — "  God  is  a  Spirit,  and  they  that 
worship  Him  must  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 

The  influence  of  Judasa  lives  in  words  like  these.  The 
"  in  spirit  '*  is  an  assertion  of  the  universal  presence  of 


128  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

God  everywhere  in  man,  never  in  a  temple  or  city,  to  be 
worshipped  by  mind,  never  as  in  a  place.  The  "  in  truth  " 
expresses  the  essential  quality  or  element  of  worship, 
stands,  as  it  were,  opposed  to  "in  form"  or  "  in  ritual." 
The  worship  that  is  everywhere  possible  must  be  always 
ethical ;  what  is  independent  of  place  is  dependent  on  spirit 
and  truth. 

But  while  the  "  in  spirit  "  is  in  contrast  with  the  "  in 
Jerusalem  "  of  Judaism,  it  is  in  essential  agreement  with 
**  God  is  a  Spirit."  Where  God  is  conceived  as  a  Spirit, 
worship  must  be  spiritual ;  where  worship  is  sensuous, 
God  is  sensuously  conceived.  Worship  is  but  the  mutual 
speech  of  the  Divine  and  the  human ;  God  is  as  active 
in  it  as  man.  And  so  it  is  only  where  He  is  rightly  con- 
ceived that  man  can  rightly  worship.  He  could  as  little 
worship  a  God  that  was  only  cold  eternity  or  silent  speech- 
less space  as  it  could  know  or  speak  to  him.  And  so 
Christ  verifies  and  personalizes  "  spirit "  by  the  term 
Father,  seeks  by  creating  a  new  consciousness  of  God  to 
create  a  new  attitude  of  the  spirit  towards  Him.  As  His 
phrase  "  in  truth  "  is  in  contrast  with  *'  in  ceremonies"  or 
*'  in  sensuous  forms,"  so  it  is  in  radical  agreement  with 
the  idea  expressed  by  "  Father."  Falsity  in  worship  may 
be  either  in  the  object  or  in  the  subject  :  if  the  first,  it  is 
idolatry;  if  the  second,  it  is  hypocrisy.  These,  as  com- 
monly used,  are  opposites :  heathenism  is  better  than 
hypocrisy;  honest  faith  in  a  false  religion  is  better  than 
false  worship  in  a  true.  But  they  may  really  be  so  related 
as  to  be  opposite  sides  of  one  thing.  Man  cannot  offer 
false  worship  to  a  true  God.  Where  the  worship  is  false 
the  God  must  be  the  same  ;  the  one  falsifies  the  other. 
God  is  conceived  and  addressed,  not  as  He  is,  but  as  the 
worshipper  imagines  Him  to  be.  Hence  Christ's  aim  was 
to  create  true  worship  by  creating  true  knowledge  of  God. 
The  Father  deserved  honour,  the  Son  owed  reverence. 


GALILEE,  yUDJEA,  SAMARIA.  129 

Filial  reverence  was  always  beautiful  and  always  honour- 
able. It  would  not  write  a  wrinkle  on  the  brow  that  grows 
more  beautiful  with  age,  or  touch  with  pain  the  heart 
loved  for  the  love  it  had  given.  Filial  honour  grows  with 
years.  We  become  better  sons  and  daughters  the  more 
the  memory  of  those  we  first  knew  and  loved 
Wins  a  glory  from  their  being  far, 

and  orbs  into  a  rounded  and  mellow  beauty  we  did  not 
see  while  in  their  home.  It  is  doubtful  whether  any 
daughter  ever  knew  what  her  mother  was  or  how  she 
loved  her  till  she  herself  had  tasted  the  bliss  and  pain,  the 
anxieties  and  joys,  of  motherhood.  Possibly  no  son  ever 
honoured  his  father  as  he  could  and  should  have  honoured 
him  till  he  had  sons  clustering  round  his  own  knees  and 
sitting  at  his  own  table.  So  Christ  seeks  to  create  filial  love 
by  creating  a  conscious  filial  relation,  certain  that  the  reve- 
rence which  flows  from  love  would  make  "  worship  in  spirit 
and  in  truth"  a  happy  necessity,  local  and  sensuous  worship 
a  sure  impossibility.  The  idea  of  God  which  Judaea  cast 
out  and  Samaria  received  was  the  idea  creative  of  the  true 
worship,  everywhere  possible,  but  possible  only  as  ethical. 
And  for  this  faith,  what  hope  ?  The  Outcast  of  Jeru- 
salem, the  city  of  the  one  God,  might  well  despond.  Yet 
to  Him  comfort  had  come  and  largest  hope.  His  own 
words  to  the  woman,  the  woman's  attitude  to  Himself  and 
His  truth,  had  evoked  visions  that  became  to  Him,  weary 
as  He  was,  as  the  very  food  of  God.  He  saw  the  world 
standing  all  open  in  eye  and  soul  to  receive  His  truth, 
made  by  it  reverent,  obedient,  holy ;  and  His  words  told 
the  vision  that  gladdened  His  soul :  "  Lift  up  your  eyes, 
and  look  on  the  fields  ;  for  they  are  white  already  to  har- 
vest. And  he  thatreapeth  receiveth  wages,  and  gathereth 
fruit  unto  life  eternal :  that  both  he  that  soweth  and  he 
that  reapeth  may  rejoice  together."  » 
•  ]ohn  iv.  35,36. 


VIII. 

THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES, 

The  fame  of  the  things  Jesus  had  done  "  at  Jerusalem 
at  the  feast " '  went  before  Him  into  Galilee,  and  He  was 
welcomed  for  His  works'  sake.  He  avoided  Nazareth — 
the  Prophet  was  not  as  yet  received  in  His  own  country* 
— and  settled  beside  the  lake  of  Gennesareth,  near  the 
homes  of  the  men  that  formed  the  noblest  legacy  be- 
queathed to  Him  by  John.  There,  beside  the  bright 
waters,  in  the  shadow  of  the  graceful  palms,  within  sight 
of  the  cornfields  and  vineyards  that  sloped  from  the  blue 
lake  till  they  seemed  to  touch  the  blue  sky,  He  breathed 
a  purer  air,  enjoyed  a  happier  life,  looked  upon  wiser, 
because  simpler,  men  than  at  Jerusalem.  And  these 
stiller  and  sweeter  surroundings  were  but  the  conditions 
He  needed  to  perform  and  perfect  His  great  constructive 
work. 

There  are  certain  moments  and  scenes  that  pro- 
foundly touch  the  imagination.  Abraham,  his  back  to 
Chaldaea,  his  face  to  Canaan,  setting  out  with  his  young 
and  beautiful  Sarah  from  the  cradle  of  the  great  world- 
empires  to  seek  a  land  where  they  could  found  an  empire 
of  the  Spirit,  become  the  progenitors  of  the  people  of  the 
Book,  who,  while  despised  and  hated  as  a  nation,  were 
yet  to  be,  as  the  apostles  and  prophets  of  Jahveh,  supreme 
legislators  in  religion ;  the  first  rude  settlers  building 
their  huts  on  the  hills  beside  the  Tiber,  tending  their 
*  John  iv.  45.  "  Luke  iv.  24. 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES.  131 

flocks,  praying  to  their  gods,  spoiling  their  enemies,  lay- 
ing— in  the  blind  and  unconscious  way  common  to  men 
doing  greater  things  than  they  dream  of — the  foundations 
of  a  city  whose  dominion  was  to  be  for  centuries  co- 
extensive with  civilization ;  Columbus  leaving  Europe, 
or  standing  on  the  deck  of  his  ship  watching  the  new 
world,  with  all  its  boundless  hope  and  promise  to  the  old, 
rising  from  below  the  horizon  ; — are  scenes  which  mark 
GO  great  moments  in  the  life  of  man  that  the  imagination 
feels  equally  awed  and  inspired  in  their  presence.  But 
the  return  of  Jesus  to  Galilee  was  a  moment  that  far 
transcended  these  alike  in  seeming  insignificance  and 
real  immensity  of  issue.  He  entered  it  apparently  a 
fugitive  from  Judaea,  really  the  conscious  Creator  of  the 
new  yet  eternal  City  of  God.  The  society  He  was  there 
to  create  was  never  to  die  ;  was  to  spread  through  every 
land  as  through  all  time ;  was  to  bind  the  ages  in  a 
wonderful  harmony  of  spirit  and  purpose,  man  in  a  mystic 
brotherhood  of  faith  and  love.  If  we  can  conceive  the 
marvellous  vision  of  the  future  as  open  to  the  prescience 
of  the  Master,  His  soul  may  well  have  been  cheered  by 
the  joy  that  was  set  before  Him ;  while  the  men  that 
were  being,  all  unconsciously,  fashioned  into  the  agents  of 
His  great  will,  must  have  been  to  His  mind  a  present  rich 
in  the  rarest  meanings,  the  grandest  promises,  a  sort  of 
new  infant  humanity,  with  all  its  infinite  possibilities 
open  to  the  eye  of  God,  but  concealed  from  its  own 
innocent  and  dependent  gaze. 

We  have  been  accustomed  to  associate  the  miraculous 
with  action  in  the  sphere  of  things  physical,  but  a 
physical  miracle  is  often  only  a  marvel  to  the  senses 
The  distinctive  miracles  of  Christ  are  spiritual.  His 
living,  penetrative,  permanent  power  over  man  is  like  a 
standing  miracle  within  the  order  known  to  our  ex- 
perience.    There  is  nothing  in  history  like  the   change 


132  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

Jesus  wrought  in  the  Galileans  He  called  into  His  society 
— unless,  indeed,  it  be  the  similar  changes  He  has  been 
working  ever  since.  Later,  a  proud  Roman  '  and  a 
cultured  Greek  ^  were  to  pour  contempt  on  a  religion 
whose  Founder  had  been  a  crucified  carpenter,  whose 
earliest  preachers  had  been  wretched  publicans,  ignorant 
fishermen,  itinerant  tent-makers.  But  what  they  thought 
its  shame,  after  and  wiser  ages  were  to  think  its  glory. 
For  the  power  to  make  the  mean  noble,  the  wretched 
happy,  the  ignorant  more  enlightened  and  beneficent  than 
the  wise,  the  wandering  workman  an  unresting  preacher 
of  great  and  inspiring  truths,  is  the  divinest  power  that 
has  yet  been  known  to  act  within  the  region  of  the  spirit. 
And  this  is  the  power  Christ  exercised  while  He  lived, 
and  has  never  since  ceased  to  exercise.  He  elected  men 
into  His  society,  not  as  made,  but  that  they  might  be 
made.  The  men  He  chose  were  only  masses  of  latent 
capabilities,  full  of  meaning  to  no  eye  but  His,  and  to  it 
the  latent  was  more  real  and  more  precious  than  the 
patent.  His  selection,  superficially  regarded,  might  seem 
a  studied  offence  to  the  authorities  of  His  day ;  funda- 
mentally regarded,  it  proves  His  pure  and  prescient 
wisdom.  The  world  has  not  been  inclined  to  seek  its 
"  mute  inglorious  Miltons "  among  its  fishermen.  As  a 
class  they  are  simple,  superstitious,  unintellectual,  accus- 
tomed to  exercise  the  senses  rather  than  the  reason. 
Publicans,  too,  have  not  been  an  admired  class  :  the  men 
that  extorted  money  for  a  hated  state  have  always  been 
hated  as  personifying  its  worst  vices.  To  select  men 
from  these  classes  for  a  great  religious  mission,  looked 
like  selecting  the  worst  persons  possible,  the  most  dis- 
qualified for  the  work,  the  least  able  to  command  success. 
Yet  from  these  classes  Christ  selected  men  that  He  pene* 

'  Tacitus,  Amial.,  xv.  44. 

'  Celsus,  in  Origen,  Contra  Cels.,  lib.  iii.  cc.  44,  50,  52,  55. 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES,         133 

tratedy  permeated,  possessed  with  His  spirit,  in  a  personal, 
yet  real,  sense  Christianized.  They  became  vehicles  of 
His  influence,  carried,  as  implanted,  the  life  that  lived  in 
Him  as  original  and  innate.  What  He  commutiicated  to 
them  they  communicated  to  the  race.  They  became  in 
Christ's  society  the  patriarchs  of  a  new  Israel,  the 
founders  of  a  new  faith.  Association  with  Him  was  a 
Divine  education  which  quaUfied  not  only  for  citizenship 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but  also  for  creating  citizens, 
the  institution  of  the  churches  that  were  to  extend  and 
realize  the  reign  of  God.  The  marvel  is,  not  that  the 
fishermen  of  Galilee  conquered  the  world,  but  that  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  made  them  its  conquerors.  The  wonder  lies 
in  the  making  of  the  men,  not  in  their  doings.  The 
Inspirer  is  more  extraordinary  than  the  inspired,  es- 
pecially when  they  were  men  so  little  susceptible  of  His 
influence  that  He  had  to  create  the  very  capacity  to 
receive  His  inspiration,  with  the  consequent  ability  to 
realize  His  ends. 

Now,  this  making  of  the  men  is  what  is  here  to  be 
studied.  It  was,  indeed,  a  process  that  continued  through- 
out Christ's  ministry  ;  but  the  creative  period  was  the 
period  of  intimate  and  tender  association  in  Galilee,  when 
the  Master  lived  in  humble  and  beautiful  beneficence,  and 
the  disciples  grew  and  rejoiced  in  His  light.  It  was  to  His 
and  their  souls  a  time  of  fine  and  fruitful  rest,  of  activities 
that  played  while  they  worked  in  the  glad  sunshine.  The 
discourses  belonging  to  it  show  a  calm  and  almost  joyous 
spirit,  untouched  as  yet  by  the  shadow  of  the  cross.  They 
do  not  speak  of  the  decease  to  be  accomplished  at  Jeru- 
salem, are  not  concerned  with  controversy  or  conflict,  do 
not  gloomily  forecast  troubles  to  come.  These  qualities 
were  to  mark  the  discourses  of  later  and  darker  times. 
Meanwhile  all  was  sunny  in  His  spirit  and  speech.  Heaven 
was  about  Him,  as  within ;  His  truth  and  wisdom  were 


134  STUDIES  IiV  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

subduing  His  little  society  unto  Himself.  His  words  seem 
fragrant  of  the  vineyard,  the  meadow,  and  the  grove ;  full 
of  the  love  that  turns  into  glory  the  light  of  common  day^ 
the  spirit  that  changes  into  music  its  most  familiar  sounds. 
His  haunts  were  not  the  great  cities,  but  the  towns  and 
villages  that  stood  round  the  lake  He  loved,  or  the  hills 
that  overlooked  the  plains  where,  with  the  open  and  beau- 
tiful sky  above  and  the  fragrant  fruitful  earth  around.  He 
could  speak  to  His  disciples  of  their  Father  in  heaven,  of 
His  care  for  all  that  lived  and  breathtd,  of  the  truths  the 
soul  could  hear  spoken  by  the  lovely  and  modest  lily,  or 
sung  by  the  soaring  and  singing  bird.  This  quiet  and 
beautiful  time,  when  the  Master  lived  with  and  for  His 
disciples,  was  the  time  when  He  iuvStituted  His  society  by 
creating  its  creative  citizens,  the  men  that  were  to  stand 
round  the  King. 

The  method  of  Christ  was  twofold  :  His  great  formative 
agencies  were  speech  and  fellowship.  His  words  created 
a  new  world  within  and  around  His  disciples,  filled  their 
minds  with  new  thought,  aims,  ideals,  hopes.  We  know 
how  His  speech  has  embodied  and  embalmed  His  truth, 
made  God  a  new  Being  to  man,  made  man  a  new  being  to 
God  and  to  himself;  but  we  can  ill  imagine  the  influence 
exercised  by  His  living  speech,  by  His  words  as  interpreted 
by  voice  and  eye,  by  the  invisible  soul  that  yet  looked 
visibly  out  from  every  feature  and  sense.  To  hear  His 
daily  speech  was  not  simply  to  receive  His  thoughts,  but 
to  share,  as  it  were,  the  inmost  life  of  His  Spirit — to  stand 
within  the  holy  of  holies,  and  listen  to  the  soft  yet  awful 
voice  telling  the  highest  mysteries,  speaking  the  last 
secrets  of  the  Unknown.  It  was  to  the  disciples  a  sudden 
elevation,  a  being  lifted  from  a  twilight  more  delusive  than 
darkness  to  the  sunlit,  glory-crowned  Mount  of  God — a  re- 
velation that  must  have  dazzled  the  men  who  received  it, 
had  it  not  been  subdued  into  softest  yet  purest  light  by  the 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES,         135 

medium  through  which  it  streamed.  His  speech  is,  after 
eighteen  centuries,  exceeding  wonderful  to  the  world,  and 
humanity  still  listens  to  it  as  one  listens  to  a  tale  he  cannot 
choose  but  hear,  yet  to  the  men  who  first  heaiti  it  it  was 
made  finely  intelligible  by  His  person.  To  hear  His  speech 
was  to  enjoy  His  fellowship,  and  His  fellowship  created 
the  sense  that  understood  His  speech.  His  words  came 
to  them  explained  by  a  living  and  articulate  commentary  ; 
their  edition  was,  as  it  were,  illustrated,  the  illustrations 
being  tableaux  vtvants  composed  from  the  acts,  character, 
and  conduct  of  the  Speaker.  The  men  might  not  under- 
stand the  text,  but  they  understood  the  illustrations ;  they 
might  find  the  saying  hard,  but  the  commentary  was 
entirely  intelligible.  Fellowship  is  the  most  potent  of 
educative  agencies^  and  its  highest  potency  was  realized 
in  the  society  which  knew  by  experience  what  spiritual 
forces  were  embodied  in  the  Christ. 

If,  then,  we  are  to  understand  Christ's  method  of  edu- 
cating His  disciples  or  founding  His  society,  it  must  be 
through  His  two  great  agencies — His  Speech  and  Fellow- 
ship. His  mode  of  using  the  first  may  be  best  seen  in  His 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  Matthew  and  Luke  both  recognize 
it  as  essentially  a  discourse  to  the  disciples.^  To  both 
Evangelists  it  is  an  inaugural  sermon,  but  Matthew  alone 
perceives  its  proper  place  and  value>  and  reports  it  at 
length.  In  it  Christ  explains  His  conception  of  the  king- 
dom, imparts  His  own  mind  to  His  disciples.  It  implied 
faith,  but  aimed  at  creating  knowledge,  and  the  obedience 
and  sympathy  l^nowledge  alone  can  evoke.  The  discourse 
is  in  itself  remarkable  enough.  It  contains  the  most 
weighty,  because  the  most  weighed,  words  of  Jesus  ;  is 
His  most  deliberate  deliverance — the  set  speech,  as  it  were, 
fruit  of  forethought,  for  which  He  made  rather  than  found 
occasion.  The  parables  were  for  the  most  part  opportune 
*  Matt.  V.  2  ;  Luke  vi.  20. 


136  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

words,  drawn  from  Him  by  the  suggestion  or  necessities  ol 
the  moment,  intended  to  rebuke,  to  warn,  to  encourage, 
or  instruct  particular  men  or  classes.  The  sayings  that 
pointed  the  moral  of  miracle  or  event,  that  expressed  the 
joy  or  sorrow  caused  by  incident  or  outlook;  the  answers 
called  forth  by  disciples  or  seekers  after  truth  or  health, 
by  Pharisee  or  Sadducee  anxious  to  entangle  Him  in  His 
talk,  or  by  Pilate  flinging  out  in  a  question  that  jested  His 
heart-sick  doubt — were,  one  and  all,  occasional,  even  where 
most  divinely  significant.  But  here  Jesus  does  not  wait 
to  be  found  by  event  or  inquiry  :  He  stands  forward  to  in- 
stitute His  kingdom  by  revealing  its  nature  and  proclaim- 
ing its  laws.  He  speaks  to  the  men  He  had  chosen  to 
be  its  first  and  creative  citizens,  that  they  might  know  His 
purpose  and  mission,  know  where  they  themselves  stood, 
to  what  they  had  been  called,  and  what  they  ought  to 
become  and  to  do. 

We  do  not  regard  this  sermon,  then,  especially  as  it 
exists  in  Matthew,  as  a  mere  agglomeration  of  discon- 
nected and  isolated  sayings,  or  a  patchwork  made  up  of  frag- 
ments from  various  forgotten  discourses.^  We  believe  that 
it  is  an  unity,  harmonious  in  all  its  parts,  coherent  through- 
out, progressing  in  the  most  rational  order  from  beginning 
to  end.  We  believe,  too,  that  it  has  been  set  in  its  right 
place,  that  it  is  an  inaugural  sermon,  delivered  soon  after 
the  return  to  Galilee,  bearing  evidences  of  the  recent  visit 
to  Jerusalem,  expressly  designed  to  make  the  consciousness 
of  Christ  an  open  secret  to  His  disciples.  His  kingdom  a 
reality  to  intellect  and  conscience.  It  is  evidently  an 
early  discourse,  expository,  not  apologetic — save,  indeed,  as 
regards  one  most  significant  point ;  and  so  belongs  to  a 
period  while  opposition  was  still  future,  before  contradic- 
tion had  assailed  His  doctrine,  or  hatred  threatened  or 
maligned  His  person.  The  one  apologetic  point  is  where 
^  Renan,  Les  Evangiles,  p.  177. 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES.         137 

He  declares  He  has  "not  come  to  destroy  the  law  and  the 
prophets."  ^  His  words  imply  that  there  were  suspicions 
or  charges  on  this  matter,  but  the  only  thing  that  could 
occasion  these  belongs  to  His  Judaean,  not  to  His  Galilean, 
ministry — His  saying,  *' Destroy  this  temple."  ^  Matthew^ 
and  Luke'^  significantly  mention,  just  before  reporting  the 
sermon,  that  ''  there  followed  Him  great  multitudes  from 
Jerusalem  and  Judaea  :  "  and  may  not  their  presence  in 
Galilee  be  best  explained  as  the  result  of  His  presence  at 
the  feast  and  the  interest  it  had  caused  ?  Then,  too,  the 
manner  in  which  He  describes  and  contrasts  real  and 
unreal  worship  seems  to  indicate  an  imagination  vividly 
impressed  by  recent  scenes,  too  freshly  touched  to  be  alto- 
gether calm ;  and  the  scenes  that  could  so  move  could  be 
witnessed  only  at  Jerusalem.  The  sermon  appears,  too, 
to  be  subtly  and  variously  related  to  the  discourse  to  the 
Samaritan  woman.  They  differ  thus  :  the  one  is  a  dis- 
course on  worship,  the  other  on  obedience.  Their  subjects 
are,  respectively,  How  ought  God  to  be  worshipped  ?  and, 
How  ought  God  to  be  served  ?  But  these  differences  are 
due  to  the  accidents  of  time  and  audience,  and  must  not  be 
allowed  to  conceal  their  essential  affinity.  The  attitude, 
as  we  may  call  it,  of  Christ's  mind  is  the  same  in  both 
cases  :  in  the  one  He  enjoins  spiritual  worship,  in  the 
other  He  inculcates  spiritual  obedience,  each  in  contrast  to 
its  sensuous  and  formal  opposite.  The  discourse  exhibits 
the  new  and  perfect  as  opposed  to  the  old  and  imperfect 
worship ;  the  sermon,  the  new  and  spiritual  as  opposed  to 
the  old  outer  and  ceremonial  law.  As  is  the  new  worship, 
so  is  the  new  obedience  ;  each  is,  and  for  the  same  reason, 
"in  spirit"  and  "in  truth."  In  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other, 
the  Divine  Paternity  is  the  determinating  idea;  theworship 
and  obedience  must,  to  be  real,  be  agreeable  to  the  nature 


Matt.  V.  17. 

3  Matt.  iv.  25. 

John  ii.  19. 

4  Luke  vi.  17, 

10 

I 


138  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

and  character  of  the  Father.  Then,  too,  Christ's  sense  of 
the  Divine  sufficiency  is  the  same  in  both  cases.  In  the  one 
He  speaks  of  the  harvest  as  present  though  distant,  as  so 
contained  in  spring  that  sower  and  reaper  can  rejoice  to- 
gether ;  in  the  other,  He  speaks  of  the  happy  faith  that  is 
satisfied  with  to-day,  that  can  work  in  the  present,  certain 
that  its  fruits  and  the  future  are  safe  in  the  hands  of  God. 
Spiritual  worship  and  spiritual  obedience  alike  proceed 
from  a  spiritual  and  filial  conception  of  God  :  where  such 
a  conception  exists  there  is  certain  to  be  a  faith  victorious 
over  sense. 

These  affinities  seem  to  indicate  that  the  Discourse 
in  Samaria  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  stand  in 
point  of  time  near  each  other.  Similar  thoughts  and  asso- 
ciations seem  to  be  active  in  the  mind  of  the  Speaker, 
His  speech  differing  because  place  and  purpose  are  dif- 
ferent. If  our  infe  eice  is  right,  it  helps  us  not  only  to 
define  the  time  of  the  sermon  as  soon  after  the  return 
to  GaHlee,  but  also  the  better  to  describe  its  design.  The 
disciples  had  been  made  to  know  His  mission — that  He 
had  come  to  establish  a  kingdom,  that  His  kingdom  stood 
in  antagonism  to  Judaism,  the  only  theocratic  system 
they  knew :  but  what  His  kingdom  was,  its  essential 
nature  and  laws,  they  did  not  know.  Their  faith  was,  in 
a  sense,  Wind — a  faith  in  Himself  alone.  Of  the  things 
He  had  come  to  do,  and  purposed  doing,  they  knew 
nothing.  But  an  ignorant  trust  was  not  to  His  mind  ; 
they  must  know  His  idea  if  they  were  ever  to  realize  His 
ideal ;  must  possess  His  thoughts  if  they  were  to  be  pos- 
sessed of  His  Spirit  and  aims.  The  men  who  were  to 
constitute  His  State  could  do  so  only  as  they  understood 
its  constitution  and  laws. 

From  this  standpoint,  let  us  attempt  to  interpret  in 
rough  outline  this  great  sermon.  The  Introduction  (Chap. 
V.  3-16)  presents  discipleship,  or  rather  citizenship,  under 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES.         139 

two  great  aspects :  first,  as  regards  its  rewards  and  privi- 
leges— the  Beatitudes  (Verses  3-12)  ;  second,  as  regards 
its  essential  functions  and  duties  (Verses  13-16).  The 
Introduction  is  a  glorious  vestibule,  altogether  seemly  and 
suitable  to  this  new  yet  eternal  palace  of  truth.  The 
Beatitudes  significantly  stand  first.  The  strength  of  the 
old  law  lay  in  its  stern  sanctions,  but  the  strength  of  the 
new  is  to  be  its  benedictions.  Moses  constrained  to  obe- 
dience by  pronouncing  the  disobedient  accursed,  but  Christ 
invites  to  loving  loyalty  by  pronouncing  the  citizen  of  His 
kingdom  blessed.  This  alone  was  a  new  thing  in  the  world. 
Men  were  to  be  no  more  made  religious  by  terror,  but  were 
to  be  won  to  righteousness  by  sweetly  winsome  hope  and 
happiness.  Obedience,  as  Jesus  conceived  it,  could  not 
proceed  from  fear  ;  the  obedience  of  fear  was  but  disguised 
disobedience.  The  man  that  obeyed  God  through  terror 
would  have  obeyed  His  opposite  had  he  been  still  more 
terrible.  But  to  Jesus  obedience  is  love,  a  sweet  and 
welcome  necessity  to  a  heart  that  knows  God  as  its  Father 
and  itself  as  His  child.  And  so  religion  is  beatitude,  love 
active  and  exercised  ;  the  kingdom  which  makes  righteous 
makes  blessed.  And  the  blessedness  is  not  uniform,  all 
of  one  kind  :  it  exists  in  many  varieties,  adapted  to  every 
degree  of  love,  to  every  quality  and  condition  of  soul.  The 
God  who  made  men  to  differ  creates  for  each  man  a  happi- 
ness of  his  own,  allows  no  loyal  citizen  to  go  empty  away. 
The  Beatitudes  fall  into  two  great  classes — those  of 
resignation  and  those  of  hope,  or  blessings  for  those  who 
learn  obedience  through  suffering,  and  blessings  for  those 
whose  obedience  is  active,  though  hated  and  persecuted, 
beneficence.  To  the  first  class  belong  the  poor  in  spirit, 
the  mourners,  the  meek,  the  men  who  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness  ;  to  the  second  class,  the  merciful,  the 
pure  in  heart,  the  peacemakers,  the  persecuted  for  right- 
eousness' sake.     Each  has  his  appropriate  blessing.     The 


140  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

poor  in  spirit,  vacant  of  self,  waiting  for  God,  conscious 
of  a  poverty  that  only  the  Divine  indwelling  can  change 
into  wealth,  feeling,  like  the  wondrous  beggar  of  Meister 
Eckhart,  that  they  "  would  sooner  be  in  hell  and  have 
God,  than  in  heaven  and  not  have  Him,"  ^  are  already 
citizens  ;  "  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  The 
mourners,  who  feel  the  evil  of  sin  and  the  sanctity  of 
sorrow,  who  are,  like  the  man  of  the  "  marred  visage,'* 
''  acquainted  with  grief,"  but  only  so  as  to  be  "  made 
perfect  through  suffering,"  are  "to  be  comforted,"  their 
**  sorrow  shall  be  turned  into  joy,"  transformed  by  the  soft 
and  silent  comfort  of  God.  The  meek,  conscious  of  human 
littleness  and  Divine  greatness,  sweetly  reasonable  with 
man,  humbly  reverent  and  obedient  towards  God,  are  to 
"  inherit  the  earth  :  "  their  patience,  the  muffled  gentleness 
of  Divine  strength,  shall  yet  prevail  over  boisterous  pride. 
The  men  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  who 
seek  the  living  God,  conscious  that  they  were  made  for 
Him,  are  to  be  filled,  are  to  be  satisfied  with  the  object  of 
their  desire  and  search.  The  merciful,  generous  to  the 
fallen,  gentle  to  the  weak,  gracious  to  the  offender,  are  to 
*'  obtain  mercy,"  are  to  be  twice  blessed  ;  blessed  as  givers 
and  receivers  of  the  grace  that  "  droppeth  as  the  gentle 
rain  from  heaven  upon  the  place  beneath."  The  pure  in 
heart  are,  as  light-ful,  able  to  receive  more  light,  to  enjoy 
that  beatitude  which  has  been  the  hope  and  passion  of  the 
devout  in  every  age,  "to  see  God;"  because,  being  like 
Him,  "they  shall  see  Him  as  He  is."  The  peacemakers, 
creating  brotherhood,  making  our  troubled  earth  the  home 
of  love,  are  to  be  "  the  children  of  God,"  like  in  spirit  and 
in  work  to  their  Father  in  heaven.  The  persecuted  for 
righteousness'  sake  are  not  to  be  vanquished  by  persecu- 
tion, but  to  have  the  reward  of  the  righteous — theirs  is  to 
be  the  final  good,  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  So,  at  length, 
I  Martensen's  Meister  Eckart^  p.  107. 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES,         141 

there  is  hope  of  happiness  for  man.  It  has  ceased  to 
be  an  outer,  has  been  made  an  inner,  good.  The  happy 
man  is  to  make  the  happy  world,  not  the  happy  world  the 
happy  man.  The  kingdom  and  its  rewards  are 'spiritual, 
**  not  meat  and  drink,  but  righteousness,  peace,  joy,  in 
the  Holy  Ghost."  ^ 

The  second  section  of  the  Introduction  is  intimately 
related  to  the  first.  The  essential  functions  are,  in  a  sort, 
the  Beatitudes  in  their  outward  aspect — the  men  who  are 
saintly  exercising  the  influence  inseparable  from  sainted 
men.  The  functions  are  not  voluntary  duties,  are  but  the 
action  of  qualities  already  possessed.  So  the  men  who 
are  "  blessed  '*  are  "the  salt  of  the  earth  " — preserve  it ; 
are  "  the  light  of  the  world  " — guide  and  teach  it.  Con- 
scious beatitude  is  necessary  beneficence ;  to  make  a  man 
good  is  to  do  good  to  man.  Personal  vice  is  social  disin- 
tegration ;  the  virtue  of  individuals  is  the  strength  of  a 
nation.  In  the  alleys  and  slums  of  our  crowded  cities 
cleanly  families  are  sanitary  powers,  are  not  only  witnesses 
for  physical  cleanliness,  but  prevent  the  circle  they  influ- 
ence from  falling  complete  victims  to  impurity.  So  in 
morals  a  good  man  is  not  simply  a  witness  for  virtue,  but 
a  means  of  repressing  vice,  of  keeping  alive  in  men  a  sense 
of  duty,  a  consciousness  of  right,  an  ideal  of  the  good  and 
the  true.  "  Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth."  But  the  citizens 
of  the  kingdom  are  more  than  preservative,  they  are 
dynamical  and  directive  forces.  Their  faith  is  a  faith  in 
progress,  in  a  world  governed  by  righteousness  and  love. 
They  are  never  satisfied  with  the  actual,  must  ever  strive 
towards  the  ideal.  They  keep  alive  the  knowledge  of  God, 
and  all  that  God  represents,  both  as  to  the  present  and 
future  of  the  race,  as  to  what  is  the  worst  evil  and  what 
thq  greatest  good  alike  to  the  individual  and  the  nation. 
**  Ye  are  the  light  of  the  world."     The  sun,  so  long  as  it 

I  Rom.  xiv.  17. 


142  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

is  a  sun,  cannot  but  shine ;  it  is  of  its  very  essence  to 
give  light,  and  light  is  the  mother  of  life.  We  are  all  the 
children  of  the  sun.  "  Even  so  let  your  light  shine  before 
men,  that  they  may  see  your  good  works,  and  glorify  your 
Father  w^hich  is  in  heaven." 

The  body  of  the  discourse  (Chap.  v.  17-48,  and  Chap, 
vi.)  is  a  discussion  of  the  new  law  in  its  relations  and  con- 
trasts to  the  old,  and  in  its  essential  principles,  duties,  and 
aims.  He  begins  by  defining  His  relation  to  the  old  :  "  I 
am  come  not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil."  He  is  the  end  of 
the  law,  abolishes  by  fulfilling  it,  is  at  once  its  consum- 
mation and  cessation.  He  is  the  end  of  prophecy ;  for 
Him  it  lived,  to  Him  it  pointed,  in  Him  is  fulfilled.  The 
law  and  the  prophets  were  (i)  predictive,  and  (2)  enactive 
and  creative  of  righteousness,  and  in  both  senses  they  were 
fulfilled  by  Christ.  The  law  was  prophecy  in  act ;  pro- 
phecy was  law  articulated  or  proclaimed.  Each  affirmed 
in  its  own  way,  *'  God  reigns  in  righteousness ;  man  owes 
Him  obedience ;  the  Holy  can  only  be  worshipped  by  the 
good,  cannot  be  worshipped  by  the  evil  as  evil;  they  must 
approach  Him  by  sacrifice,  and  sacrifice  that  involves 
renunciation  of  sin,  the  quest  after  clean  hands  and  a  pure 
heart.''  And  what  each  thus  declared,  Christ  fulfilled. 
He  was  humanity  become  holy,  perfect  before  God.  And 
in  Him  perfect  holiness  was  perfect  sacrifice.  Every  truth 
as  to  God  and  His  righteousness,  every  duty,  hope,  and 
aspiration  as  to  man  embodied  in  the  law,  proclaimed  by 
the  prophets,  was  fulfilled  by  Christ.  But  the  end  of  the 
old  is  the  beginning  of  the  new,  the  leXo?  is  here  an  a/3%^;. 
Every  function  possessed  and  discharged  by  law  and  pro- 
phecy He  possesses  and  discharges,  realizing  their  essen- 
tial end,  carrying  into  grandest  performani^e  their  every 
endeavour  and  dream.  The  righteousness  they  attempt 
to  enact  and  create  He  causes  to  exist.  He  succeeds 
where  they  failed.     The  righteous  man  is  dutiful  towards 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES.         143 

men  and  reverent  towards  God  ;  righteousness  is  but  right 
action  as  regards  man  and  right  worship  as  regards  God. 
Legal  righteousness,  which  ought  to  be  distinguished  from 
the  righteousness  of  the  law  and  the  prophets,  had,  as 
exemplified  in  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  become  a  gross 
caricature  of  the  great  reality.  Jesus  exhib'ts  His  in 
contrast  to  legal  righteousness,  first,  as  regards  murder 
(Verses  21-26)  ;  second,  as  regards  adultery  (Verses  27- 
30) ;  third,  as  regards  divorce  (Verses  31,  32)  ;  fourth,  as 
regards  perjury,  or  rather  the  conditions  and  forms  of 
veracity  in  soul  and  speech  (Verses  33-37)  ;  fifth,  as 
regards  retaliation  (Verses  38-42) ;  sixth,  as  regards  social 
feelings,  sympathies,  and  antipathies.  And  then  He  finally 
expresses  and  enforces  His  grand  ideal  in  the  words,  *'  Be 
perfect,  as  your  heavenly  Father  is  perfect."  Duty  done 
to  man  is  God  imitated.  Obedience  is  imitation  of  God. 
The  law  of  God  is  just  His  spoken  character,  His  ex- 
pressed righteousness.  To  do  His  will  is  to  become  as 
He  is,  like  Him  in  character,  righteous  as  He  is  righteous. 
God's  perfection  is  not  physical,  but  moral;  and  the  moral 
is  ever  the  imitable.  Were  Satan  Almighty,  he  would  not 
cease  to  be  Satan,  would  be  none  the  less,  rather  all  the 
more,  the  evil  opposite  of  God.  Might  can  never  make 
right — is  great  only  as  the  arm  of  righteousness.  To  know 
all  things  were  not  to  be  perfect,  for  an  infinite  eye  that 
saw  misery  unpitied  were  but  the  serene  cruelty  that  is  so 
cruel  because  so  cold.  To  be  everywhere  at  every  moment 
were  not  to  be  perfect,  for  an  omnipresence  that  had 
neither  the  will  nor  the  hand  to  help  were  a  presence  of 
mockery  and  insult.  The  perfection  of  God  is  the  sove- 
reignty of  His  moral  attributes — the  rule  they  exercise 
over  His  physical,  making  His  omnipotence  strength 
clothed  in  gentleness,  His  omniscience  the  herald  of  swift- 
footed  mercy,  His  omnipresence  the  ever-active  body  of 
reigning  and  restoring  righteousness.     And  a  perfection 


£44  STUDIES  IN  THE  11  FE  OF  CHRIST, 

that  is  moral  is  a  perfection  that  can  be  imitated.  Man 
has  been  made  in  the  image,  that  he  may  live  after  the 
mind  of  God.  Our  spirits  bear  His  likeness  that  our 
characters  may  embody  His  righteousness.  We  are  His 
sons  that  we  may  love  as  He  loves,  be  good  as  He  is  good, 
perfect  as  He  is  perfect,  strenuous  in  the  spiritual  service 
that  alone  can  please  and  honour  a  spiritual  God.  Christ 
in  creating  the  spirit  of  a  .son  creates  the  desire  to  imitate 
God,  to  act  as  we  think  He  would  act  did  He  live  as  we 
live  under  the  conditions  of  space  and  time. 

Christ  then  turns  to  the  duties  that  are  more  specific- 
ally religious,  and  pursues  the  same  method  of  contrast 
as  regards  three — alms  (Chap.  vi.  1-4),  prayer  (Verses 
5-15),  fasting  (Verses  16-18).  Almsgiving  was  a  religious 
act,  a  reminiscence  of  the  truth  that  mercy  to  man  was 
the  best  service  of  God.  Jesus  in  effect  says,  *'  Do  it  as 
unto  God ;  let  it  be  a  matter  between  thee  and  God,  done 
for  Him,  approved  by  Him  ;  then  the  act  will  be  good  like 
His  mercy,  and  do  good  like  His  love."  Prayer,  too,  con- 
cerns God  and  the  soul  alone  ;  must  be  not  formal,  but 
filial,  speech ;  speech  that  as  filial  is  full  of  reverence,  the 
consciousness  of  dependence,  a  sense  of  the  brotherhood 
in  which  man  is  bound,  of  common  sonship  to  the  common 
Father,  with  all  the  love  and  tenderness  to  earth  and 
heaven  it  involves.  Prayer  is  the  communion  with  God  of 
a  GodHke  mind  ;  where  there  is  antipathy  to  man  there  can- 
not be  affinity  or  intercourse  with  God.  Hence  prayer  and 
forgiveness  are  so  related  that  the  one  is  the  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  other :  only  a  forgiving  spirit  can  ask  to  be 
forgiven.  *'  Fasting,"  too,  is  a  private  and  personal  matter, 
to  be  done  to  and  with  God  alone  ;  without  meaning, 
as  seen,  with  meaning  only  as  it  enables  the  soul  to  meet 
and  speak  in  secret  with  God.  But  prayer,  intensified  by 
the  meditation  which  fasting  allows,  becomes  the  mother 
of  desire — God  the   supreme  object,  in  whom  alone  our 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES,         145 

hearts  can  repose  (Verses  ig-21).  The  more  man  has  of 
God  the  more  he  desires  to  possess  :  here  possession  but 
increases  capacity  and  quickens  desire.  But  where  the 
heart  is  turned  in  desire  towards  God,  there  the  light  of 
God  enters  and  abides  (Verses  22,  23).  And  where  light 
and  love  dwell,  there  perfect  obedience  and  absolute  trust 
ought  to  be  (Verses  24-30).  These  can  never  be  disjoined. 
There  cannot  be  obedience  without  trust,  or  trust  without 
obedience.  The  faith  that  is  without  care  is  expressed  in 
unwearied  activity,  in  a  dutiful  fulfilment  of  the  little  as 
well  as  great  obligations  of  life  and  time.  The  man  who 
thinks  Providence  exists  simply  to  make  up  his  lack  of 
service,  despises  Providence.  The  fowls  of  the  air  are 
diligent  and  unresting  workers ;  our  heavenly  Father 
feedeth  them  by  means  of  their  own  unweariedly  exercised 
activities.  But  man's  energies  ought  to  be  employed 
about  dutiful  and  necessary  things,  ought  not  to  be  ex- 
hausted in  anxiety  about  the  possible,  probable,  or  contin- 
gent. Duty  done,  all  is  done  that  man  need  be  concerned 
about ;  God  will  mind  the  rest.  And  so  Christ  turns  to 
the  practical  inferences  (Verses  31-34).  Do  not  spend 
your  energies  on  distrustful  and  enervating  conjectures  as 
to  things  sensuous.  Seek  the  kingdom  of  God,  become 
citizens  there,  realize  righteousness,  and  then  everything 
will  be  secured.  The  future  can  have  nothing  to  alarm, 
no  evil  can  happen  that  shall  not  be  made  a  means  of 
higher  good.  To  trust  in  God  is  to  believe  that  infinite 
righteousness  can  never  allow  the  righteous  to  suffer  any 
real  or  ultimate  wrong. 

With  the  sixth  chapter  the  expository  part  of  the  ser- 
mon ends ;  what  remains  is  but  a  series  of  exhortations 
and  admonitions.  Hurried  as  our  glance  through  it  has 
been,  it  has  sufficed  to  show  certain  of  the  more  distinctive 
qualities  in  Christ's  conception  of  the  kingdom,  of  man's 
duties  to  God  and  man.     His  conception  was  throughout 


146  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

spiritual,  had  no  sensuous,  legal,  or  sacerdotal  element. 
His  worship  could  be  as  little  embodied  or  conducted  in 
symbols  as  His  God  could  be  represented  by  a  graven 
image.  The  obedience  He  required  stood  as  remote  from 
ritual  or  ceremonial  observances  as  He  did  from  Judaism. 
But  how  could  a  conception  so  elevated,  so  unlike  the 
notions  then  common  and  traditional,  be  made  intelligible 
to  men  so  simple  and  uncultured  as  His  disciples  ?  Here 
the  action  of  His  other  great  educative  agency  came  in. 
His  fellowship  made  His  sermon  luminous,  interpreted  His 
words,  filled  out  their  hidden  and  inarticulate  meanings. 
The  only  religion  the  disciples  had  hitherto  known  had 
been  one  of  symbols  and  symbolical  acts.  As  exhibited  in 
its  acknowledged  representatives,  it  was  altogether  a  most 
manifest  and  mensurable  thing.  To  fast  twice  in  the 
week  was  to  be  eminently  pious.  To  be  an  ostensible  giver 
of  alms  was  to  be  benevolent.  To  utter  formal  prayers 
in  frequented  places  was  to  be  devout.  To  wear  phylac- 
teries was  to  be  full  of  faith.  To  despise  and  avoid  pub- 
licans, to  hate  and  shun  sinners,  to  dislike  and  stand  apart 
from  the  Gentiles,  were  evidences  of  sure  fidelity  to  the 
Eternal  and  His  law.  Symbols  and  symbolical  acts,  sen- 
suous distinctions  and  deeds,  constituted  the  religion  that 
then  claimed  to  be  the  alone  true.  But  now  let  us  observe 
how  Jesus  lived,  and  what  immense  educative  value  be- 
longs to  certain  too  little  studied  acts  of  His.  He  did  not 
fast,  but  lived  a  sweet  and  winsome,  and,  even  in  spite  of 
His  sorrows,  a  cheerful  social  life.  He  did  not  give  alms, 
though  He  helped  the  poor  in  ways  that  lifted  their  spirits 
while  lightening  their  poverty.  He  never  prayed  openly 
in  the  chief  places  of  concourse,  where  men  could  see  and 
hear,  but  rather  on  the  still  mountain  side  when  alone 
with  the  Father,  or  when  surrounded  by  His  loved  and 
trusted  band^  He  implored  that  He  and  they  might  be  one. 
His  short,  swift  petitions,  the  cries,  wrung  from  Him  in 


THE  MASTER  AND  THE  DISCIPLES.         147 

His  agony,  that  seemed  to  pierce  the  silent  heaven  like 
the  sob  of  a  heart  grief  had  broken,  were  personal,  came 
straight  from  Him,  and  went  straight  to  His  Father. 
He  wore  no  phylactery,  knew  and  loved  Scripture  too  well 
to  use  it  as  an  idol  or  a  charm.  He  associated  v/ith 
publicans  and  sinners,  became  their  "  Friend,"  so  familiar 
with  their  society  as  to  be  charged  with  being  "  gluttonous 
and  a  winebibber."  He  did  not  abjure  the  Gentiles, 
passed  through  and  taught  in  Samaria,  visited  and 
preached  in  the  coasts  of  Tyre  and  Sidon.  Now  all  this 
must  have  made  Him  a  great  puzzle  to  those  who  saw 
Him  only  from  without.  The  ordinary  signs  and  acts  of 
religion  were  absent,  and  men  who  judged  by  these  would 
think  He  had  none,  just  as  later  heathenism  thought 
Christianity  atheism,  because  the  Christians  were  without 
images  and  temples,  and  refused  to  worship  any  of  the 
recognized  gods.  But  what  bewildered  His  enemies  in- 
structed and  informed  His  disciples.  They  saw  that  His 
religion  neither  consisted  in,  nor  existed  by,  things  ex- 
ternal ;  that  these  might  bury  or  betray,  but  could  not 
make  or  express  it.  Instead,  it  was  a  state  of  the  spirit 
expressed  or  revealed  in  conduct ;  a  love  to  God  that  was 
equal  to  any  service,  making  obedience,  however  seemingly 
hard,  spontaneous ;  a  love  to  man  equal  to  any  sacrifice, 
able  with  a  truly  Divine  freedom  to  give  self  for  the  life  of 
the  world.  And  so  just  as  the  meaning  of  His  person  and 
life  became  through  fellowship  dimly  intelligible  to  the 
disciples.  His  words  would  become  full  of  the  significance 
that  made  them  the  last  and  most  perfect  revelation  of 
God. 

We  here  touch  a  great  subject,  the  relation  of  the  per- 
son and  words  of  Christ  to  each  other.  These  are  indeed 
inseparable.  The  words  are,  as  it  were,  the  expressed 
essence  of  the  person  ;  the  person,  the  cause  or  source  of 
the  words.     But  the  person  is  the  greater  ;  the  cause  must 


148  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

ever  transcend  the  effect,  the  thinker  be  more  and  mightier 
than  His  thoughts.  Without  Jesus,  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
had  been  comparatively  impotent.  If  His  sayings  had 
fallen  from  heaven  like  the  great  Ephesian  goddess,  they 
had  never  made  for  man  a  new  faith  and  a  diviner  religion. 
The  truths  His  words  embodied  His  person  incarnated, 
and  without  the  life  lived  the  words  preached  had  been 
but  spoken  into  the  air.  This  subtle  essential  relation  of 
speaker  and  speech,  experienced  all  along  the  Christian 
ages,  was  most  deeply  and  resultfully  experienced  by  the 
men  Jesus  found  fishermen  of  Galilee,  but  made  into 
apostles  of  a  new  faith,  founders  of  the  new  and  universal 
and  absolute  religion. 


IX. 

THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES. 

Miracles,  once  regarded  as  the  great  bulwark  of  the 
Christian  faith,  are  now  regarded  as  its  greatest  burden. 
Here,  perhaps  more  than  anywhere  else,  can  be  seen  the 
kind  and  degree  of  the  changes  worked  by  the  modern 
spirit  in  our  fundamental  assumptions  and  general  attitude 
of  mind  to  nature  and  history.  What  was  once  made  to 
prove  the  Divine  origin  and  authority  of  our  religion,  has 
now  to  be  shown  to  be  in  no  way  inimical  to  its  truth  or 
prejudicial  to  its  claims.  The  older  apologists  used  to 
argue,  Christianity  is  made  credible,  proved  to  be  super- 
natural and  Divine,  by  its  miracles ;  they  are  signs  that 
the  God  who  transcends  and  created  nature  thus  and  then 
instituted  a  perfect  and  authoritative  religion.  Now  it  is 
argued.  Miracles  are  possible  and  may  be  credible ;  need 
not,  therefore,  stagger  faith  or  start  doubt ;  events  that 
may  occur  ought  to  be  believed,  when  attested  by  credible 
witnesses.  Once  it  was  common  to  magnify  the  offensive- 
ness  of  the  cross,  that  its  early  successes  might  be  traced 
the  more  directly  to  its  miracles;  now  it  is  common  to 
allow  its  physical  wonders  to  grow  pale  or  be  forgotten 
before  its  spiritual  and  ethical  glories.  Mind,  once  credu- 
lous, is  now  suspicious  of  marvels,  and  can  more  easily  be- 
lieve truths  that  speak  to  its  reason  than  events  that  appeal 
to  its  senses. 

The  change  thus  indicated  is  remarkable  and  instructive 
— a  change  to  be  welcomed  rather  than  deprecated.     The 


ISO         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

early  use  of  miracles  was  an  abuse,  an  almost  exact  inver- 
sion of  the  truth.     Events  that  w^ere  by  their  very  nature 
sensuous  and  transitory  v^ere  made  proofs  of  a  faith  that  is 
essentially  transcendental    and   permanent.      The   proofs 
and  the  thing  to  be  proved  w^ere  rather  radically  opposed 
than    rationally   related.      Truths  which  abide  for  ever, 
which  were  full  of  the  light  that  penetrates  the  intellect 
and  the  sweetness   that  wins  the  heart,  were  made   to 
derive,  if  not  their  reason,  their  authority  from  events  that, 
appealing  to  the  senses,  could  never  authenticate  or  guar- 
antee what  was  spiritual  and  eternal.      Truth  is  above 
time ;  like  God,  it  can  never  grow  old  or  become  local  and 
irrelevant ;  but  miracles  have  at  best  only  an  occasional 
value,  become  less  significant  and   credible  by  distance, 
grow  strange  to  the  intellect  as  they  grow  remote  from  ex- 
perience.    The   claims    of  truth  on  belief  increase  with 
time,  but  those  of  miracles  decrease.     The  accidents  of 
the  birth  perish  or  are  forgotten,  but  the  reality  of  the  life 
is  evident  every  moment  in  every  movement  of  the  living 
being. 

As  men  conceived  miracles  in  general,  they  also  con- 
ceived their  special  or  distinctive  relation  to  Christ.  They 
were  made  to  prove  that  He  possessed  supernatural  power, 
could  exercise  it  directly,  by  a  word  or  act  of  the  will, 
without  any  intermediate  or  instrumental  agency.  He 
could  anticipate  the  slow  and  normal  action  of  natural 
forces  and  processes,  as  in  changing  water  into  wine;  could 
control  the  fiercest  of  the  elements,  as  in  calming  the 
storm ;  could  create,  as  in  multiplying  the  loaves  and 
fishes ;  could  undo  accomplished  deeds,  not  only  repeal 
laws  of  nature,  but  cancel  events  that  had  happened  from 
their  universal  and  necessary  operation,  as  in  raising  the 
dead.  These  were  made  to  argue  Deity,  Divine  power 
possessed  by  nature  and  exercised  by  right.  But  miracles 
thus  became  the  guarantees  of  His  real  being,  evidences  of 


THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES,  151 

His  nature  and  mission.  They  were  His  credentials ;  He 
was  to  be  believed,  not  for  His  own  or  His  truth's  sake, 
but  for  His  works'.  This  made  Him  what  He  had  ex- 
pressly disclaimed  being,  a  worker  of  signs,'  a  doer  of 
wonders,  that  brought  the  kingdom  of  heaven  with  obser- 
vation, a  cause  of  physical  events  that  could  never  constrain 
to  spiritual  faith.  But  while  the  miracles  reveal,  they  do 
not  prove,  the  Christ.  They  may  be  necessary  to  our 
conception  of  Him,  but  it  is  in  their  moral  rather  than 
their  physical  aspect ;  as  symbols  expressing  the  quality 
and  range  of  His  activity,  rather  than  as  proofs  demon- 
strating the  constitution  of  His  person  or  being.  The 
axiom,  We  believe  the  miracles  because  we  believe  in 
Christ,  We  do  not  believe  in  Christ  because  we  believe  the 
miracles,  is  true  when  rightly  understood.  The  power  to 
work  miracles  could  never  prove  its  possessor  to  be  a  per- 
son so  extraordinary  as  we  conceive  Christ  to  be ;  but 
Christ  once  conceived  to  be  the  extraordinary  Person  we 
believe  Him  to  be,  miracles  become  to  Him  both  natural 
and  necessary.  They  are  the  symbols  of  the  reality  He  is, 
the  appropriate  expressions  of  the  force  He  embodies. 
They  complete  the  picture  of  the  Divine  goodness  He 
manifests,  show  that  its  action  in  the  physical  is  in  essential 
harmony  with  its  action  in  the  moral  sphere.  The  natural 
action  of  moral  beings  is  moral  action  ;  the  miracles  of 
Christ  are  physical  witnesses  to  His  essential  spirit  and 
aims — therefore  formally  physical,  but  materially  moral. 
They,  as  it  were,  personalize  for  us  the  moral  action  of 
God,  show  how  He  acts  towards  the  miseries  and  weak- 
nesses of  His  creatures,  and  thus  become  essential  ele- 
ments in  the  declaration  of  the  Father  made  by  the  Only 
Begotten. 

We  do  not  intend,  then,  to  attempt  here  a  defence  of 
miracles,  but  rather  a  discussion  and  exposition  of  their 
right  relation  to  Christ.     That  relation,  indeed,  is  the  best 


152  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

apology  for  their  truth,  and  the  true  vindication  of  their 
worth.  It  Hfts  them  into  a  sphere  where  they  become 
intelligible,  rational,  necessary,  legitimate  effects  of  an 
adequate  cause.  The  objections  that  annihilate  miracles 
annihilate  Christ ;  what  preserves  His  Person  saves  their 
being.  In  the  region  of  thought  and  history  where  He 
becomes  a  reality,  they  too  become  real.  His  and  their 
opponent  lives  and  thinks  on  the  plane  of  the  natural,  and 
His  nature  is  very  shallow  and  circumscribed.  It  is  a 
nature  whose  order  can  be  transcended  as  little  by  person- 
alities as  by  events.  Persons,  indeed,  are  to  Him  but  a 
series  of  events,  determined  in  their  sequence  by  a  named 
or  nameless  necessity.  Nature  is  but  sentient  man,  man 
but  perceived  or  remembered  nature,  determined  in  all  his 
choices,  as  in  his  coming  and  going,  by  forces  ever  per- 
sistent, yet  ever  in  process  of  premutation ;  no  freer  in  his 
action  than  the  falling  stone,  or  the  ebbing  and  flowing 
tide,  or  the  rounded  and  rolling  star.  And  this  invariable 
order,  though  it  be  termed  the  order  of  nature,  is  but 
another  name  for  the  imperfectly  understood  or  ill-inter- 
preted experience  of  man,  is  what  he  has  observed,  the 
way  of  nature  as  revealed  to  his  senses  rather  than  as  ex- 
plicated by  his  reason.  But  if  the  question  be  lifted  from 
nature  into  spirit,  from  the  domain  of  necessity  into  that 
of  freedom,  from  the  sphere  of  events  into  that  of  person- 
ality, then  it  is  radically  changed.  It  is  no  longer  a  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  the  order  of  nature  can  be  broken,  but 
as  to  what  a  given  personality  is,  and  what  its  normal 
action  must  be.  The  acts  of  extraordinary  persons  are 
extraordinary,  measured  by  the  ordinary  standard,  but  be- 
coming and  natural,  measured  by  their  own  personality. 
If  events  happen  according  to  the  order  of  nature,  acts 
done  are  in  harmony  with  the  nature  of  the  actor.  If 
persons  are  not  the  products  of  physical  forces,  it  is  but 
rational  to  think  that  their  acts  will  conform  to  the  power 


THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES.  153 

or  nature  they  embody,  rather  than  the  order  that  did  not 
produce  them.  Given,  in  short,  the  Person  of  Jesus,  and 
it  is  more  natural  that  He  should  than  that  He  ^should  not 
work  miracles ;  they  become  the  proper  and  spontaneous 
manifestations,  the  organic  outcome  or  revelation,  of  His 
actual  or  realized  being.  Our  supernatural  was  His 
natural ;  what  we  call  His  miracles  were  but  the  normal 
expressions  of  His  energy,  as  nature  is  but  the  manifested 
activity  of  the  immanent  God. 

Of  course  this  position  affirms  that  the  Person  of  Christ 
is,  in  a  sense,  a  stupendous  miracle.  The  nature  of  the 
physicists  could  not  have  produced  Him.  He  was,  in  re- 
lation to  their  laws  and  forces,  transcendental,  supernatural. 
To  a  supernatural  person  supernatural  action  is  pro- 
per or  native ;  where  he  seems  most  ordinary  he  is  most 
extraordinary.  Now,  personality  everywhere  transcends 
nature,  and  only  the  universality  of  the  transcendence 
hides  its  essentially  supernatural  character.  What  is 
realized  in  varying  degrees  in  man  was  realized  in  the 
most  pre-eminent  degree  in  Christ.  His  transcendence  is 
an  historical  fact.  The  forces  unified  in  His  person  have 
proved  themselves  unique  alike  as  to  quality  and  kind.  His 
place  in  history  but  illustrates  and  explicates  His  historical 
person,  enables  us  to  judge  the  energies  that  lived  in  Him 
through  the  power  and  influence  He  has  exercised.  In 
Him  was  life,  and  the  life  has  been  the  light  of  men. 

It  is,  however,  certain  to  be  argued,  A  miraculous  pe^-son 
is  no  more  possible,  no  more  credible,  than  a  miraculous 
event.  While  every  person  transcends  nature  in  the  nar- 
rower sense — that  of  the  physicists — nature  in  the  larger 
sense — that  of  the  philosophers— is  the  common  mother  of 
all  persons,  the  maker  of  all  personalities.  It  were  a  small 
thing  to  say.  We  concede  the  point ;  it  is  the  very  point 
for  which  we  contend.  Nature  in  the  larger  sense  is 
nat«  "e  creative,  not  simply  created ;  includes,  does  not  ex- 
II 


154  STUDIES  IN  THE  II FE  OF  CHRIST. 

elude,  the  Divine  energies.  What  nature,  so  understood, 
does,  God  does ;  and  its  products  or  achievements  must  be 
interpreted,  not  through  our  idea  of  nature,  but  through 
our  idea  of  God.  While  the  former  cannot  explain  Christ, 
the  latter  can ;  measured  by  the  first.  He  is  a  miracle, 
measured  by  the  second.  He  is  a  natural  and  spontaneous 
product.  Our  notion  of  Christ's  personality  may  contra- 
dict the  idea  of  nature  we  owe  to  the  physicist,  but  it  is  in 
harmony  with  our  idea  of  God — nay,  grows  necessarily  out 
of  it.  And  the  latter  is  here  the  determinating  idea  ;  while 
the  effect  may  explicate  the  cause,  the  cause  alone  can 
explain  the  effect.  So  long  as  Christ  is  conceived  in  har- 
mony with  this  all-determinating  idea,  our  conception  of 
Him  has  the  same  rational  basis  as  our  conception  of  the 
being  and  becoming  of  the  universe. 

A  discussion  as  to  the  possibility  or  impossibility  of 
miracles  is  meaningless,  unless  carried  back  to  first  prin- 
ciples. These  principles  are  in  the  last  resort  philoso- 
phical, concern  our  notion  of  nature  or  God,  and  our  notion 
of  man.  These  notions,  though  distinguished,  are  subtly 
and  inseparably  connected.  As  we  conceive  God,  we  con- 
ceive man.  Our  conception  of  the  universe  is  variously 
yet  faithfully  mirrored  in  our  conception  of  the  individual, 
of  the  personal  and  conscious  mind.  Yet  it  is  convenient 
to  distinguish  the  notions,  and  Spinoza  and  Hume  may  be 
respectively  used  to  illustrate  how  the  notion  of  God  or 
nature,  in  the  one  case,  and  the  notion  of  man,  in  the 
other,  determines  the  question  as  to  the  possibility  and 
credibility  of  miracles. 

To  Spinoza,  God  and  nature  were  one  and  the  same  ; 
its  laws  were  His  decrees ;  nothing  was  contingent  in  it, 
everything  necessary,  determined  alike  as  to  being  and 
action  by  the  necessity  of  the  Divine  nature.  God  was 
the  one  and  only  substance,  extension  and  thought  were 
His  attributes,  and  everything  existed  and  behaved  in  a 


THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES,  155 

manner  absolutely  determined  by  His  nature  or  essence. 
The  only  Cause,  alike  in  nature  and  spirit,  was  the  imman- 
ent God,  whose  actions  were  always  the  necessary  results 
of  His  perfections.     Hence  any  contradiction  of  natural 
law  was  a  contradiction  of  the  Divine  nature.     To  affirm 
that  God  had  done  anything  against  physical  law  was,  as 
it  were,  to  affirm  that  God  had   acted  against  His  own 
essence.      The   fundamental    conception  was  a  rigorous 
Monism,    and    to    a    Monism,    theistic    or    materialistic, 
miracles  are  not  only  impossible,  but  absurd.     The  objec- 
tion of  the  pantheist  and  materialist  to   miracles  is  the 
same,  only  stated  in  different  terms.     Each  recognizes  but 
one  force  in  the  universe,  necessary,  mechanical,  homo- 
geneous in  nature,  uniform  in  action,  revealed  in  the  order 
disclosed  to  sense;  and  so  each  is  obliged  to  deny  anything 
that  requires  or  presupposes  an  active  or  conscious  will 
above,  yet  within,  the  material  universe.     But  if  their  first 
principles  are  denied,  their  inferences  cannot  be  received 
as  valid.     If  nature  is  held  to  reveal  a  personal  reason  and 
an  active  will,  it  is  but  logical  to  conclude  that  the  uni- 
verse will  be  governed  as  reason  and  will  alone  can  govern 
— in  ways  that  are  voluntary  and  for  ends  that  are  rational. 
These   may  imply  or  manifest  the  miraculous,  but  our 
miraculous  is  our  God's  natural — ix.^  is  the  obedience  of 
the    Divine  will  to  the  ends  or  purposes  of  the  Divine 
reason.     What  seems  to  contradict  nature  as  real  need  not 
contradict  it  as  ideal,  as  the  arena  on  which  a  God  works 
in  ways  and  for  reasons  worthy  of  a   God.      While   He 
remains  the  supreme  object  of  our  faith  and  thought,  it  is 
but  the  highest  reasonableness  to  interpret  through  Him 
the  greatest  personality  in  history,  the  most  natural  when 
conceived  through  God,  the  most  miraculous  when  con- 
ceived through  nature. 

The  distinctive  point  in  Hume's  position  was  the  denial 
of  the  credibility  rather  than  the  possibility  of  miracles. 


156  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

The  point   is  characteristic,  though  his  reasons  were  a 
curious  blending  of  principles  he  owed  to  his  scepticism 
with  principles  derived  from  the  dogmaticism   he  subtly 
concealed  in  its  later  form.     Hume's  scepticism,  logically 
developed,  did  not  allow  him  to  pronounce  against  the  pos- 
sibility of  miracles,  but  required  him  to  pronounce  against 
their  credibility.     He  had  resolved  man  into  a  series  of 
sensations,    a   succession,  without    any   rational   connec- 
tion or  order,  of  conscious  sensuous  states.    Knowledge  was 
nade  up  of  impressions  and  ideas,  or  lively  and  faint,  per- 
ceived and  remembered  sensations.     Its  cause  was  thus 
external  and  unknown ;  our  knowledge  was  made  for  us, 
not  by  us — formed  by  our  experience,  created  by  our  cir- 
cumstances or  environment.     What  could  not  be  resolved 
into  a  sensation  could  not  be  an  object  of  knowledge ;  what 
transcended  experience  belonged,  as  neither  an  impression 
nor  an  idea,  to  a  region  absolutely  inaccessible  to  mind. 
To  such  a  psychology  only  one  conclusion  was  possible — 
the  inexperienced  was  the  unknown,  the  incredible ;  and 
Hume  might  have  pushed  it  much  farther  than  he  did,  or 
rather  than  he  dared  to  do.     His  principle  was  fatal,  not 
simply  to  the  belief  in  miracles,  but  to   knowledge — was 
as  destructive  of  science  as  of  religion.     If  his  psychology 
is  denied,  his  logic  is  deprived  of  its  premisses.     If  we  re- 
fuse to  recognize  man  as  a  series  of  impressions  and  ideas, 
a  succession  of  actual  and  remembered  sensations,  he  loses 
the  assumption  that  can  alone  lend  plausibility  and  force 
to  his  argument.     If  mind  creates  experience  rather  than 
experience  mind,  the  argument  is  reversed,  the  position 
turned.      The    only  philosophy  that   can    explain  know- 
ledge  is   the   philosophy  that   seeks  reason    behind  and 
before   sensation.      Thought  is  first,  not    last,   is   not  a 
product  of  sensation,  pure  and  simple,  but  the  only  power 
that  can  translate  and  transmute  it  into  knowledge.     But 
if  so,  if  without  the  transcendental  elements  in  knowledge 


THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES,  157 

the  elements  furnished  by  experience  are  impossible, 
Hume's  elaborate  proof  of  the  incredibility  of  miracles  is 
but  a  castle  in  the  air,  no  more  consistent  than  the  struc- 
ture of  our  dreams.' 

We  cannot,  then,  feel  the  force  of  logic  that  starts  from 
premisses  we  deny.  We  do  not  feel  that  they  in  any  way 
touch  our  faith  in  the  Person  of  Christ.  He  may  be  a 
stupendous  miracle,  but  He  is  a  miracle  it  became  God  to 
work.  While  God  is  to  us  what  Jesus  represented  Him 
to  be,  we  must  always  conceive  the  appearance  of  Christ 
as  supremely  agreeable  to  His  nature. 

We  come,  then,  back  to  our  position  :  the  main  thing 
in  the  matter  of  the  miracles  is  to  discuss  and  determine 
their  relation  to  the  Person  of  Christ.  The  mysterious 
conscious  force  we  so  name  was  one,  but  the  unity  was 
variously  manifested,  and  always  in  the  most  extraordinary 
forms.  His  spirit  was  revealed,  or,  as  it  were,  incarnated 
in  four  forms,  speech  and  conduct,  institutions  and  action. 
These  are  organically  related  to  each  other  and  to  Him, 

*  Professor  Huxley,  in  his  interesting  but  somewhat  sketchy  mono- 
graph on  Hume,  characteristically  gives  up  Hume's  argument  against 
the  possibility  of  miracles,  but  maintains  the  validity  of  his  argument 
against  their  credibility.  By  so  doing  he  introduces  at  once  consis- 
tency and  strength  into  the  position  as  he  states  it ;  but  his  statement 
carefully  hides  the  radical  impotence  of  the  psychology  on  which  Hume 
built.  That  psychology  involved  the  most  thorough-going  scepticism, 
made  knowledge,  made  science  impossible,  and  impossible,  too,  proof 
of  anything  that  had  occurred,  either  as  regards  time  or  place,  outside 
the  particular  individual  experience.  What  resolves  the  individual 
into  a  succession  of  sensations  that  occur  according  to  no  actual  or 
discoverable  order  and  reason,  dissolves  the  very  ideas  of  nature  and 
law,  and  makes  it  impossible  that  the  experience  of  one  can  have  any 
rational  validity  or  truth  to  another.  On  this  ground  no  science,  be- 
cause no  knowledge,  of  nature  is  possible,  and  no  proof  of  historical 
events,  because  no  experience  of  the  experience  they  describe.  But 
these  ultimate  bearings  of  Hume's  psychology  it  did  not  suit  Professor 
Huxley  to  expound,  involving,  as  they  do,  the  downfall  of  many  things 
he  loves  much  better  than  miracles. 


f58  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

were  rooted  in  the  unity  of  His  thought,  expressed  in 
their  several  manners  His  mind  and  aims.  They  are  all 
alike  remarkable  in  character,  in  their  quality  as  works  of 
the  Spirit.  His  speech  stands  alone,  constitutes  an  order 
by  itself.  There  is  no  speech  that  can  be  compared  with 
it,  so  simple,  so  transparent,  so  pre-eminent  in  power. 
His  words  could  hardly  have  been  fewer  or  mightier,  have, 
indeed,  behaved  more  like  creative  spirits  ceaselessly  mul- 
tiplying themselves  than  like  spoken  words.  His  conduct, 
too,  is  unique,  is  our  highest  ethical  ideal  embodied.  The 
religious  genius  He  is  confessed  to  have  been  is  even  more 
manifest  in  His  conduct  than  in  His  speech.  Love  to 
God  is  more  grandly  illustrated  by  His  life  than  enforced 
by  His  words ;  duty  to  man  He  more  finely  exemplifies 
than  enjoins.  Here  He  is  incomparable,  our  one  perfect 
Son  of  God  and  Brother  of  man.  Then,  His  idea  of  a 
Divine  society,  a  kingdom  of  God,  is  an  idea  extraordinary 
in  its  sublime  and  daring  originality,  and  still  more  extra- 
ordinary in  its  realization.  It  was  an  absolutely  new 
thought,  a  new  ideal  of  the  relations  of  God  and  man, 
realized  at  once  in  forms  that  created  a  new  society,  yet 
ever  struggling  towards  realization  in  forms  of  greater 
perfectness.  The  Creator  lives  in  His  creation ;  the 
society  of  Christ  is  a  permanent  incarnation  of  His  Spirit. 
Now,  the  Person  manifested  in  these  three  forms — in 
His  speech.  His  conduct,  and  His  kingdom — is  a  unique 
Person,  characterized  throughout  by  the  rarest  and  most 
exceptional  power.  Were  He  as  unique  in  action  it  would 
be  but  natural.  The  force  He  embodied  could  hardly 
be  denied  a  physical  expression.  It  was  no  more  extra- 
ordinary to  have  miraculous  power  over  nature  than  to 
have  miraculous  power  over  men.  Miracles  of  sense  are 
no  more  supernatural  than  miracles  of  spirit.  To  be  the 
moral  being  He  was,  to  live  the  life  He  lived,  to  die  as  He 
died,  to  achieve  in  man  and  society  the  changes  He  has 


THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES.  159 

achieved,  is  to  have  accomplished  miracles  infinitely 
greater  in  kind  and  quality  than  those  of  multiplying  the 
loaves,  walking  on  the  sea,  or  even  raising  the  dead.  To 
be  equal  to  the  greater  is  certainly  to  be  more  'than  equal 
to  the  less.  It  cannot  surprise  us  that  the  Creator  of  the 
speech,  the  conduct,  and  the  kingdom  of  Christ  should 
also  be  the  Creator  of  health  in  the  diseased  and  sight  to 
the  blind..  It  had  rather  surprised  us  had  one  w^hose  posi- 
tion is  so  pre-eminent  in  man  and  history  been  feeble  and 
commonplace  in  relation  to  nature  and  action. 

It  is  impossible  to  separate  miracles  from  the  historical 
Christ :  they  are  inextricably  interwoven  with  the  evan- 
gelical history.  The  words  of  Jesus  often  imply  works 
that  were  held  miraculous:  no  theory  that  allows  veracity 
to  the  first  can  deny  reality  to  the  second.  The  older 
Rationalism,  with  its  forced  naturalistic  explanations, 
became  incurably  absurd,  died,  indeed,  of  its  exegetical 
absurdities.  The  mythical  hypothesis  was  more  scientific, 
but  hardly  more  successful.  It  failed  to  explain  why  no 
miracles  were  attributed  to  the  Baptist,  why  they  were 
attributed  to  Jesus  alone,  why  so  integral  parts  of  His  his- 
tory, so  necessary  to  the  picture  of  His  historical  appear 
ance.  Then,  it  had  a  still  more  radical  fault.  It  made  the 
New  Testament  miracles  echoes  or  imitations  of  those  re- 
corded in  the  Old.  Jesus  was  arrayed  in  the  marvels  that 
had  been  made  to  surround  the  prophets.  What  they  had 
done  He  had  to  do,  in  order  that  in  Him  the  prophecies 
and  economies  of  the  past  might  alike  be  fulfilled.  But  to 
this  theory  it  was  necessary  that  the  miracles  of  Christ 
should  exactly  repeat  and  reflect  those  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment ;  a  difference  in  character  and  design  was  failure 
at  a  point  where  to  fail  was  fatal.  And  here  the  failure 
was  complete.  The  miracles  of  the  Old  Testament  are 
mainly  punitive,  but  those  of  Christ  mainly  remedial. 
The  first  express  for  the  most  part  a  retributive  spirit,  but 


i6o  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  second  are  acts  of  benevolence.  An  attempt  to  per- 
suade Jesus  to  work  a  miracle  in  the  manner  of  the  Old 
Testament  evoked  nothing  but  a  reproof  to  the  tempters.* 
His  miracles  express  His  will,  show  that  He  is  gracious  in 
word  as  in  work.  He  is  good,  and  does  good.  He  is  the 
enemy  of  disease,  of  pain  and  misery  in  all  their  forms. 
His  speech  is  illustrated  by  His  action,  would  be  without 
it  without  its  divinest  meanings.  Matthew,  with  wonder- 
ful insight,  makes  Christ's  miraculous  power  express  a 
vicarious  and  redemptive  relation.  He  healed  that  He 
might  fulfil  the  prophecy,  "  Himself  took  our  infirmities 
and  bare  our  sicknesses."  ^  He  came  to  redeem  from 
disease  as  from  sin,  bore  our  sufferings  that  He  might  cure 
our  sorrows.  His  action  was  like  the  incorporated  or 
articulated  will  of  God  ;  showed  it  in  its  essential  qualities 
active  and  exercised  in  relation  to  man.  And  this  relation 
to  the  Divine  Will  lies  at  the  root  of  His  power  over 
nattire.  His  will  is  ethically  so  one  with  God's  that  the 
ethical  becomes  almost  like  physical  identity.  His  Father 
works,  and  He  works ;  ^  and  His  works  are  His  Father's. 
This  connection  of  absolute  obedience  to  the  Divine  will 
with  possession  of  Divine  power  helps  us  to  estimate  at 
once  the  ethical  and  evidential  value  of  Christ's  miracles. 
They  are  evidences  of  ethical  perfection,  of  moral  com- 
pleteness. Nowhere  does  Pharisaic  malice  seem  so  mali- 
cious as  when  it  attempts  to  trace  His  power  to  the  devil, 
while  His  vindication  of  Himself  is  nowhere  more  vic- 
toriously complete. 4  The  miracles,  admitted  by  His 
enemies,  are  proved  to  express  the  will  of  God,  and  to 
reveal  the  ethical  quality  of  His  own  spirit. 

But  this  ethical  quality  is  seen  in  repression  as  well  as 
in  exercise — perhaps  even  more  in  the  former  than  in  the 
latter.     The  miraculous  action  of  Christ  is  distinguished 

I  Luke  ix.  54-56.  ==  Matt.  viii.  16,  17. 

3  John  V.  17.  4  Matt.  xii.  24-30  ;  Mark  iii.  22-27. 


THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES,  i6i 

by  what  can  only  be  called  miraculous  moderation.  His 
abstention  from  the  use  of  His  power  is  even  more  re- 
markable than  His  exercise  of  it.  Supernatural  power  is 
a  dangerous  thing  to  possess,  an  awful  temptation.  Few 
men  could  possess  it  without  being  depraved  by  the 
possession,  without  at  least  often  using  it  unwisely.  It 
is  a  power  with  which  we  should  hardly  be  inclined  to 
trust  any  man,  and  we  should  certainly  regard  its  owner 
with  the  most  unsleeping  and  jealous  suspicion.  But  the 
extraordinary  fact  stands  :  the  people  believed  Christ  to 
possess  it,  and  yet  trusted  Him,  and  He  justified  their 
trust.  He  was  never  untimely,  extravagant,  or  un- 
gracious in  the  exercise  of  His  supernatural  gifts.  They 
were  never  used  on  His  own  behalf.  He  had  power 
above  Nature,  but  He  lived  under  the  laws  and  within  the 
limits  she  sets  for  all  her  sons.  He  was  often  hungry  and 
athirst,  but  He  never  fed  Himself  as  He  fed  the  multi- 
tudes on  the  hillside,  or  refreshed  Himself  as  He  refreshed 
the  wedding  guests  at  Cana  in  Galilee.  He  suffered,  knew 
heart-break,  pain,  and  death ;  but  He  never  asked  any 
sovereign  might  to  lighten  His  sorrows,  heal  His  wounds, 
or  roll  back  the  ebbing  tide  of  life.  Then,  too.  His  power 
is  never  exercised  for  defensive  or  hostile  purposes.  His 
enemies  acknowledge  His  miracles,  yet  do  splendid,  though 
unconscious,  homage  to  His  goodness  by  attributing  them 
to  the  presence  or  help  of  infernal  agencies,  so  confessing 
that  He  had  a  power  more  than  human,  but  not  the  will 
to  use  it  devilishly.  His  prayer  on  the  cross  explains  and 
illustrates  His  conduct.  What  He  asked  His  Father  to 
do  He  was  always  doing — exercising  mercy,  forgiving  men 
who  did  not  know  the  sinfulness  of  their  doings.  He  was 
thus,  in  what  He  abstained  from  doing,  a  witness  to  the 
Divine  grace  He  incarnated,  restraining  anger  and  leaving 
evil  men  unharmed  to  life  and  time  and  possible  peni- 
tence.    And  this  repression  becomes,  in  one  aspect  of  it, 


1 62  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

sublimest  self-abnegation,  divinest  sacrifice.  A  being  so 
gifted  with  supernatural  power  did  not  need  to  suffer, 
to  die,  as  Jesus  did.  His  sufferings  and  death  were 
voluntary,  results  of  His  own  choice.  As  He  willed  to 
heal  men.  He  willed  to  die  for  man.  The  motives  that 
induced  Him  to  work  miracles  moved  Him  to  die.  He 
exercised  His  power  that  He  might  save  from  suffering; 
He  withheld  it  that  He  might  save  from  sin.  And  so  to 
His  disciples  His  final  and  crowning  miracle  was  His  ac- 
ceptance of  the  cross,  His  submission  to  death.  The  act 
of  repression  was  the  exercise  of  the  highest  power,  the 
power  to  lay  down  His  life,  to  give  Himself  a  ransom  for 
many.  Here  men  have  found  the  wonder  of  the  ages — ■ 
"  God  commending  His  love  to  us,  in  that,  while  we  were 
^yet  sinners,  Christ  died  for  us." 

But  the  miracles  stand  in  as  intimate  and  indissoluble 
relations  to  the  teaching  and  aims  as  to  the  character,  on 
as  it  were,  historical  ideal  of  the  Christ.  His  words  and 
works  are  as  branches  springing  from  the  same  root,  twin 
bodies  inspired  by  one  spirit.  Especially  in  the  Galilean 
period — which  is,  too,  pre-eminently  the  period  of  miracles 
—when  He  could  order  His  life  as  He  willed,  when  His 
path  was  not  watched  by  the  jealous  hate  of  Pharisee  and 
Sadducee,  when  the  homes  of  the  people  were  the  scenes 
of  His  daily  ministry,  a  fine  harmony  reigned  between 
His  speech  and  His  actions,  the  first  creating  the  light 
that  cheered  the  spirit,  the  second  creating  the  health 
that  renewed  the  body.  He  conceived  health  to  be  as 
necessary  to  happiness  as  knowledge,  and  so  He  loved  as 
well  to  make  the  diseased  whole  as  to  make  the  ignorant 
enlightened.  The  motives  that  moved  Him  to  speak 
moved  Him  also  to  action,  compassion  in  each  case  ruled 
His  will.  ^  The  men  that  most  profoundly  touched  His 
sympathies  were  the  publicans  and  sinners  on  the  one 
*  Matt.  ix.  35,  36 ;    Mark  i.  39-41. 


THE  EARLIER  MIRACLES,  163 

side,  and  the  diseased  and  possessed  on  the  other;'  and 
as  their  sorrows  drew  Him  to  them  His  gracious  and 
quickening  sympathy  drew  them  to  Him.  He  had  come 
to  be  the  physician  of  the  sick,  to  seek  and  savti  the  lost. 
It  had  been  said  that  the  days  of  the  Messiah  were  to  be 
days  of  health  as  of  happiness,^  and  He  fulfilled  the 
prophecy.  The  prophetic  words  He  used  to  declare  and 
define  His  mission  ^  find  an  instructive  echo  in  the  words 
He  used  to  describe  His  works,  the  signs  which  were  to 
enable  the  Baptist  to  judge  as  to  His  character  and 
claims.  4  In  relieving  suffering  He  was  overcoming  sin. 
His  acts  of  healing  were  victories  over  the  devil.  By 
them  He  confirmed  faith,  ^  cast  out  Satan,  ^  conquered 
evil,  created  peace,  by  creating  one  of  its  most  essential 
conditions.  His  acts,  like  His  words,  contradicted  tra- 
dition. He  would  not  be  silent  to  please  the  scribes  or 
the  schools,  and  He  would  not  be  prevented  by  an  in- 
flexible and  inhuman  law  from  lightening  human  sorrow. 
As  He  taught  that  the  Sabbath  was  riiade  for  man.  He 
healed  on  the  Sabbath.  7  As  He  taught  that  humanity 
was  greater  than  Judaism,  that  to  be  a  man  was  to  be  a 
neighbour,  owing  the  neighbourly  duties  of  help  and  con- 
solation to  all  men,  He  carried  restoration  and  comfort  to 
the  alien  as  to  the  Jew.  ^  If  we  interpret  His  works 
through  His  words,  we  can  see  how  beautifully  significant 
and  ideal  they  were,  the  symbols  of  the  Messiah  and  His 
age  coming  with  hopeful  and  happy  health  to  sick  and 
wasted  humanity. 

These  scattered  and  fragmentary  paragraphs  have  not 
even  pierced  the  surface  of  a  great  subject,  but  they  may 

'  Matt.  ix.  10-13;  Mark  i.  32-34;    ii.  17. 

*  Isaiah  Iviii.  8.  3  Luke  iv.  17-19. 

4  Matt.  ix.  4-6. 

5  Ibid.  ix.  2,  29.  fi  Ibid.  xii.  22-29. 

7  Ibid.  xii.  10-13  ;    Mark  ii.  27  ;    John  v.  16. 

8  Matt.  viii.  5-13  ;    Mark  vii.  24-30  ;    Luke  vii.  2-10  ;    x.  36,  37. 


1 64  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

have  indicated  in  a  rough  and  hurried  way  the  relation  of 
the  miracles  to  the  mysterious  and  variously  manifested 
personality  we  call  the  Christ.  In  conclusion,  it  may  be 
enough  to  remark  that,  if  we  are  right  in  our  inter- 
pretation of  this  relation,  it  ought  to  shed  some  light  on 
the  once  celebrated  controversy  as  to  the  comparative 
value  of  the  internal  and  external  evidences.  The  miracles 
are  no  more  external  to  the  system  of  Jesus  than  His 
speech.  Both  are  rooted  in  His  personality,  express  His 
thought,  reveal  His  spirit,  manifest  the  inner  and  es- 
sential qualities  of  His  heart  and  mind.  Without  either 
we  should  be  without  true  and  sufficient  knowledge  of  His 
marvellous  Person.  His  words  exhibit  the  ideal,  His 
works  the  real ;  the  former  explain  Divine  benevolence 
and  human  obedience,  but  the  latter  show  Divine  bene- 
ficence curing  human  misery,  creating  human  happiness. 
What  blossomed  in  the  flower  was  contained  in  the  seed ; 
what  was  evolved  in  the  history  was  involved  in  the 
Person  of  Christ.  The  sign  to  the  sense  is  a  symbol  of 
the  spirit,  and  miracles  are  but  means  by  which  the 
hidden  and  internal  qualities  of  Christ  become  manifest 
and  real  to  man. 


JESUS  AND   THE  JEWS.  ' 

There  are  three  things  that  at  once  characterize  Jesus 
and  His  disciples,  and  distinguish  them  from  the  men 
who  have  founded  the  other  great  religions  of  the  world, 
(i)  What  may  be  termed  their  secular  and  social  sanity; 
(2)  the  calm  religious  temper  and  reasonable  religious 
spirit  in  which  they  lived  and  acted  ;  and  (3)  the  entire 
absence  of  political  character  and  motive  in  their  words 
and  works,  methods  and  aims.  Men  deeply  moved  tend 
to  become  extravagant,  the  victims  of  passions  so  molten 
as  to  consume,  or  so  liquefied  as  to  quench,  their  common 
sense.  When  the  motives  that  move  are  religious,  come 
from  the  sudden  and  intense  realization  of  the  spiritual 
and  eternal,  the  extravagance  assumes  one  or  both  of  two 
forms  :  either  hatred  of  the  world,  its  comforts,  its  wealth, 
its  pursuits,  whatever  is  every-day  and  present,  attractive 
and  loveable  on  earth  and  in  time  ;  or  the  passion  after  ex- 
traordinary relations,  unnatural  modes  of  intercourse  with 
the  unseen,  ecstasies,  visions,  dreams,  trance-like  states 
that  transcend  nature,  invade  the  awful  presence  of  God, 
and  snatch,  as  it  were,  from  His  hand  mysteries  beyond 
the  grasp  and  hidden  from  the  eye  and  ear  of  mortals. 
But  in  the  spirit  of  Christ  there  lived  a  serene  and  radiant 
sanity.  He  loved  the  world,  did  not  hate  its  wealth  or  its 
wisdom,  or  awaken  fanaticism  against  the  art  that  had 
beautified,  or  the  thought  that  had  dignified,  or  the  trea- 
sures that  enriched,  earth  and  the  life  of  men.     And  the 


i66         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

Spirit  that  lived  in  Himself  He  made  to  reign  in  the  men 
and  society  He  formed.  The  knowledge  of  God  He  com- 
municated created  relations  with  Him  so  sweet  and  peace- 
ful that  they  needed  no  other  and  desired  no  more.  His 
disciples  were  lifted  to  a  higher  plane  than  the  one  known 
to  the  men  who  crave  after  extravagant  or  ecstatic  modes 
of  speaking  to  God,  or  being  spoken  to  by  Him.  And  as 
was  their  knowledge,  so  was  their  temper  and  spirit. 
Christ  created  an  enthusiasm  too  real  to  be  noisy,  too  deep 
to  be  evanescent,  too  sober  and  sane  in  nature  to  be  unwise 
in  action.  Their  aims  and  methods  were  His  because  He 
had  made  His  thoughts  and  spirit  theirs ;  they  lived  for 
the  kingdom  of  God,  and  did  not  concern  themselves  about 
the  kingdom  of  man. 

But  while  within  the  new  society  a  fine  process  of  assimi- 
lation to  its  Founder  was  going  on,  without  it  an  opposite 
process  was  in  active  and  ominous  operation.  Antagonism 
was  being  evolved,  suspicion  was  growing  into  aversion, 
silent  dislike  into  manifest  and  articulate  hatred.  Jesus 
was  not  like  Judas,  the  Gaulonite,  a  theocratic  zealot,  a 
rebel  against  Rome,  resolved  to  expel  the  foreigners  and 
free  Israel.  He  had  not,  like  the  Baptist,  invaded  the 
arena  of  politics,  and  attempted  to  become  a  teacher  of 
courts  and  kings.  And  Rome  did  not  feel  as  if  it  had  a 
quarrel  with  one  who  had  no  quarrel  with  it ;  or  Herod, 
as  if  he  must  crush  one  whose  path  and  purpose  were  too 
elevated  to  cross  his.  But  the  extraordinary  thing  is,  that 
Christ's  abstinence  from  politics  helped  to  evoke  a  hatred 
that  made  the  men  who  claimed  to  be  the  most  pious  and 
patriotic  in  Israel  His  absolute  foes.  While  the  Baptist 
had  been  full  of  strong  stern  words,  had  denounced  scribes 
and  Pharisees  as  a  "  viper's  brood,"  worthy  of  "  the  wrath 
to  come,"  they  had  yet  gone  to  his  baptism  and  been 
*•  baptized  of  him  in  the  Jordan,  confessing  their  sins." 
But  though  Christ  had  been  gentle  in  spirit,  soft  and  sweet 


JESUS  AND  THE  JEWS,  167 

in  speech,  always  and  everywhere  benevolent  and  benefi- 
cent, yet  they  had  never  stood  in  the  circle  of  His  disciples ; 
had,  instead,  met  Him  with  a  hate  so  deep,  that  to  be 
gratified  it  was  willing  to  sink  its  hitherto  deepest  hatred. 
Now,  why  this  difference  of  feeling,  of  attitude  and  action  ? 
Why  did  they  applaud  the  John  who  filled  the  air  with 
his  poisoned  epithets,  and  pierced  them  through  with  his 
sharp  invectives,  while  they  condemned  and  crucified  Him 
who  did  not  cry,  nor  cause  His  voice  to  be  heard  in  the 
street,  who  did  not  break  the  bruised  reed,  nor  quench  the 
smoking  flax  ?  The  question  has  interest  enough  to  de- 
serve an  attempt  at  an  answer. 

It  certamly  does  at  first  sight  look  strange  that  the 
opposition  to  Jesus  should  have  originated  with  the  Phari- 
sees, and  been  by  them  conducted  to  the  disastrous  point 
where  the  tragic  end  became  not  only  possible,  but  inevit- 
able. They  were  the  party  of  conviction,  devoutly  religious, 
splendidly  patriotic.  They  were  not  like  the  Sadducees, 
— an  aristocracy  of  blood  and  office — but  a  school  or  society 
penetrated  and  possessed  by  commanding  religious  beliefs. 
Their  devotion  to  their  theocratic  national  ideal  was  equal 
to  almost  any  sacrifice,  rose  into  a  fanaticism  that  became 
now  and  then  sublime.  It  were  an  insult,  not  simply  to 
historical  criticism,  but  to  historical  truth,  to  imagine  that 
these  men  were  in  their  opposition  to  Christ  hypocritical, 
or  in  any  way  dishonest  to  their  own  convictions.  They 
were  even  tragically  honest — too  terribly  in  earnest  to  be 
hypocritical.  But  this  only  makes  their  attitude  and  con- 
duct the  more  strangely  pathetic  and  instructive.  It  is 
indeed  a  most  significant  problem.  How  could  men  so 
enthusiastically  loyal  to  a  pure  and  lofty  monotheism  be- 
come so  fanatically  opposed  to  the  spiritual  truths  and  sub- 
sublime  monotheistic  beliefs  that  were  personified  in  Jesus  ? 

Geiger  has  said,^  **  Pharisaism  is  the  principle  of  con- 
^Sadducder  und  Pharisder^  P-  35- 


r68         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

tinuous  development,"  and  Protestantism  is  only  its 
"  perfect  reflected  image."  The  first  statement  is,  when 
properly  qualified,  finely  true ;  the  second,  curiously  incor- 
rect. There  is  a  development  marked  hy  the  increasing 
authority  of  the  letter  over  the  spirit,  and  a  development 
characterized  by  the  increasing  superiority  and  dominion 
of  the  spirit  over  the  letter.  The  former  is  Pharisaism, 
the  latter,  Protestantism.  There  is  nothing  so  unethical 
as  an  authoritative  letter,  nothing  so  moral  as  an  aw^akened 
and  regnant  spirit.  The  one  tends  to  make  and  keep  man 
conscious  of  the  morality  embodied  in  his  own  nature,  of 
the  God  who  lives  and  speaks  in  his  own  conscience ;  but 
the  other  makes  him  the  victim  of  arbitrary  rules,  that 
become  with  increasing  authority  increasingly  minute, 
exercising  a  tyranny  fatal  to  the  faintest  freedom.  The 
continuous  development  of  the  letter  is  but  the  progressive 
enslavement  of  the  spirit,  with  the  consequent  death  of 
independent  morality — i,e.,  the  reign  of  God  through  the 
conscience. 

Now  Pharisaism  signified  the  authority  and  continuous 
growth  of  the  letter.  It  believed  that  God  was  present 
and  active  in  Judaism,  that  its  unfolding  was  but  the  un- 
folding of  His  Will.  It  ascribed  to  the  traditions  of  the 
Fathers,  or  the  elders,^  legal — i.e,,  Divine — authority.  The 
scribes  and  Pharisees  sat  in  Moses*  seat,  and  made  laws  as 
authoritative  as  His.^  Moses  was  said  to  have  received 
the  law  on  Sinai  and  then  committed  it  to  Joshua,  Joshua 
to  the  elders,  the  elders  to  the  prophets,  the  prophets  to 
the  men  of  the  Great  Synagogue,  who  thus,  as  the  makers 
of  the  oral,  took  their  place  beside  the  creators  of  the 
scriptural,  law.  And  the  oral  became  in  reality  more 
authoritative  than  the  written.  Rabbi  Eleazer  had  said, 
"  He  who  expounds   the  Scriptures  in    contradiction  to 

*  Jos.,  Antiqq.^  xiii.  i6.  2.     Matt.  xv.  2  ;  Mark  vii.  3. 
a  Matt,  xxiii.  3.     Jos.,  Antiqq.^  xiii.  10.  6  ;  xviii.  i.  3. 


yi:SUS  AND  THE  JEWS.  169 

tradition  has  no  inheritance  in  the  world  to  come ;  **  and 
so  the  Mishna  recognizes  the  voice  of  the  interpreter  as 
more  authoritative  than  the  voice  of  the  interpreted.  "  It 
is  a  greater  crime  to  teach  against  the  words  or  ordi- 
nances of  the  scribes  than  against  the  Scriptures  them- 
selves." ^  Now  a  living  and  speaking  letter  is,  in  some 
respects,  worse  than  one  written  and  dead;  is  more  abso- 
lute, can  be  less  easily  eluded,  is  more  ubiquitous,  can  at 
once  be  more  ruthlessly  comprehensive  in  its  grasp  and 
more  fatally  minute  in  its  details.  Where  the  right  of  the 
individual  reason  to  interpret  the  law  is  allowed,  there 
may  be  liberty ;  where  the  right  is  denied,  there  must  be 
bondage  ;  escape  is  impossible ;  an  infallible  interpreter 
is  an  absolute  authority.  And  under  this  authority  the 
Pharisees  stood,  and  their  obedience  was  as  fanatical  as 
the  authority  was  exacting.  The  Moses  and  prophets 
they  knew  were  not  those  of  history,  but  those  of  the 
schools.  Their  God  was  the  God  of  oral  tradition,  in- 
finitely concerned  about  legal  minutiae,  not  the  God  of  the 
great  spirits  that  had  made  the  faith  of  Israel,  infinitely 
concerned  about  righteousness  and  truth.  They  had  faith 
enough,  were  believers  of  the  most  strenuous  sort ;  but  a 
faith  is  great,  not  by  virtue  of  its  subjective  strength,  but 
by  virtue  of  its  objective  reality.  The  belief  that  the  best 
thing  God  could  do  for  the  world  was  to  create  the  tradi- 
tions and  institutions  of  Judaism,  was  a  belief  that  could 
generate  the  fanaticism  of  the  tribe,  but  could  not  inspire 
the  enthusiasm  of  humanity. 

We  must  now  imagine  Christ  and  the  Pharisees  face  to 
face.  They  were  like  personalized  antitheses,  the  Phari- 
sees representing  tradition,  Christ  the  rights  of  the  spirit 
inspired  of  God.  The  contradiction  was  absolute.  It  is 
lidiculous  to  say,  with  the  latest  historian  of  the  sect,^ 

'  Sanhedrin,  xi.  3.  Cf.  Schiirer,  Neutest.  Zeitgeschichte^  p.  430. 
■  Cohen,  Les  Pharisiens^  vol.  ii.  p.  29. 
12 


r/o         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

that  "  the    antagonism    existed   only  as   to  questions   of 
conduct.'*     The   conduct  of   the    Pharisees   was   but  the 
natural  and    inevitable    result  of  their   beliefs.      If  their 
conduct  was  offensive  to  Christ,  their  beliefs  were  more 
offensive    still.     On    their   own    principles    their   conduct 
was   excellent ;    it  was  only   when  measured  and  tested 
by    His   that   it   became    bad.      And  as   He  condemned 
their  behaviour   they   condemned.    His,    and   for   similar 
reasons.      His  embodied  His  spirit,  His  ethical  and  re- 
ligious ideal ;    and  men  who  held  the  ideal  to  be  false 
could  not  admire  the  reality  as  beautiful.     The  opposition 
as  to  conduct  thus  masked  a  deeper  antagonism,  one  as 
to  the  nature  and  essence  of  religion,  as  to  the  law,  as 
to    the  truth  and  character  of   God,   His   purposes  and 
relations  towards  man.      Their  aim  was   to   make  their 
people    the   people   of    the    law,    every    man  throughout 
obedient  to  its  every  precept.    The  aim  seemed  great  and 
noble  ;  but  in  such   matters    everything    depends  on  the 
nature  of  the  law  to  be  realized.     Here  it  represented  no 
high  ideal,   but   only  a  multitude  of  juristical  and  cere- 
monial prescriptions.    The  cardinal  duties  were  of  course 
enforced — Moses  had  secured  that — but  the  law  that  so 
lived  and  grew  as  to  be  a  progressive  revelation  after  a 
very  curious  sort,  was  a  law  of  ritualistic  acts  and  articles, 
a  species  of  inspired  or  revealed  casuistry.     Moses  had 
commanded  the  Sabbath  day  to  be  kept,  but  this  finely 
general  command  had  to  be  interpreted.     It  was  declared 
that  there  were  thirty-nine  kinds  of  work  prohibited,  but 
each  kind  specified  became  in    turn   the  subject  of  new 
discussions,    distinctions,    and  prescriptions.     It  was,  for 
example,  pronounced  sinful  to  tie  or  to  loose  a  knot  on  the 
Sabbath.     But  there  are  many  kinds  of  knots,  and  it  was 
not  always  possible  to  be  certain  whether  an  exception 
might  not  be  made  in  favour  of  some  knot  or  knots  of  a 
b^>ecial  sort.     So  it  was  explained  that  if  a  knot  could  be 


yESUS  AND  THE  JEWS,  171 

loosed  with  one  hand  it  was  not  a  sin  to  loose  it ;  but  a 
sailor's  knot  or  a  camel-driver's  must  not  be  touched.' 
Then  the  prescriptions  related  not  simply  to  works 
forbidden  on  the  Sabbath,  but  to  acts  or  chances  that 
involved  only  a  possible  profanation.  The  tailor  was 
not  to  go  out  in  the  dusk  with  his  needle,  or  the  writer 
with  his  pen,  lest  he  should  forgetfully  allow  himself 
to  do  the  same  after  the  Sabbath  had  begun.^  And  these 
are  but  typical  acts  of  legislation.  An  ideal  constructed 
on  such  lines  may  be  fanatically  loved,  but  the  love  can 
as  little  ennoble  the  law  as  dignify  the  man. 

We  can  but  ill  imagine  how  abhorrent  to  Christ  must 
have  been  the  notion  that  such  laws  were  God's,  and 
the  obedience  they  created  pleasing  to  Him.  The  strength 
of  His  love  to  the  theocratic  ideal  can  alone  measure  the 
greatness  of  His  aversion  to  its  miserable  counterfeit.  He 
condemned  equally  the  conduct  of  the  Pharisees  and  their 
perversions  of  the  law,  and  found  in  their  unveracious 
dealing  with  the  Scriptures  the  secret  and  explanation  of 
all  their  other  unveracities.  Their  traditions  transgressed 
the  commandments  of  God.^  Moses,  like  a  wise  law- 
giver, certain  that  the  family  was  the  basis  of  society 
and  the  state,  had  made  honour  to  parents  the  first 
and  fundamental  duty  of  man  to  man ;  but  they  had 
set  the  Rabbi  above  the  Father,  made  the  teacher  of 
wisdom  stand,  as  to  His  claims  on  obedience  and  service, 
abcve  the  parent,*  and  had  instructed  the  people  how, 
under  the  pretext  of  doing  honour  to  God,  they  might 
neglect  father  and  mother.^  The  most  absolute  slave  of 
the  letter  is  always  the  man  who  does  it  most  violence. 
While  he  professes  to  be  devoted  to  the  law,  he  devises 

«  Schiirer,  Neutest.  Zeitgeschkhte,  p.  485  *  Ibid.  p.  488. 

S  Matt.  XV.  3. 

4  Schiirer,  Neutest.  Zeitgeschkhte,  p.  442. 

s  Matt.  XV,  6. 


17^         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

interpretations  that  annul  its  most  distinctive  precepts; 
and  so  the  blamelessly  faithful  Pharisee  was  inwardly- 
unfaithful  and  impure.^  The  one  Christ  drew,  praying 
in  the  Temple,^  was  but  a  type  of  the  man  their  beliefs 
tended  to  create,  and  was  possibly  so  familiar  and  true 
that  the  sect  could  hardly  understand  the  reason  and 
righteousness  of  the  judgment  it  was  designed  to  express; 
might  rather,  in  a  bewildered  away,  regard  it  as  a  portrait 
they  would  have  praised,  had  it  not  so  evidently  embodied 
its  painter's  disgust.  Yet  Christ's  condemnation  did  not 
here  reach  its  severest  point.  That  point  was  reached 
only  when  He  denounced  their  infidelity  to  their  own  laws, 
as  well  as  to  God's,  so  touching  the  last  and  most  awful 
depth  of  the  unveracity  produced  by  the  worship  of  the 
letter.  It  was  the  boast  of  the  scribes  that  they  loved 
the  law,  the  truth  and  wisdom  of  the  Fathers,  too  well 
to  teach  for  fee  or  reward ;  ^  yet  they  "  devoured  widows* 
houses,  and  for  a  pretence  made  long  prayers."  *  It  was 
no  wonder  that  Christ  warned  His  disciples  against  ''the 
leaven  of  the  Pharisees, "^  and  declared  to  them,  "  Except 
your  righteousness  shall  exceed  the  righteousness  of  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no  case  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven."  ^ 

The  antagonism  of  Christ  and  the  Pharisees  was  thus 
essential  and  radical.  It  was  so  sharp  and  direct  that 
they  could  not  regard  Him  otherwise  than  with  mingled 
amazement  and  horror.  It  appeared  a  most  impious  thing 
to  deny  and  deride  tradition,  the  more  so  that  the  denial 
rested  on  a  conception  of  God  and  His  Word  that  contra- 
dicted  the  conception  of  those  schools  whose  voice  had 

'  Luke  xi.  39.  "  Ibid,  xviii.  9-14. 

3  Gfrorer,  Das  Jahrhundert  des  Heils^  vol.  ii.  pp.  156-60.  Schiirer^ 
N eldest.  Zeitgeschichte^  p.  443. 

4  Mark  xii.  40 ;  Luke  xx.  47. 

*  Matt.  xvi.  6  ;  Mark  viii.  15     Luke  xii.  i  ^  Matt,  v  20. 


yESUS  AND  THE  JEWS,  173 

been  to  them  for  generations  as  the  voice  of  God.  They 
never  imaijined  that  He  could  be  right,  or  they  wrong. 
How  could  they,  when  they  believed  that  they  possessed 
this  absolute  and  exclusive  inspiration  of  God  ?  They 
could  not  pause  to  examine  His  claims  or  meaning — that 
had  implied  the  possibility  of  His  truth  and  their  error. 
There  was  only  one  thing  possible — an  antagonism  of 
action  and  feeling  as  sharp  and  bitter  as  the  antagonism 
of  thought  and  speech.  His  gentle  spirit,  His  beautiful 
character,  His  winsome  ways  and  words,  might  make 
opposition  a  sore  thing  to  their  souls ;  but  the  more  the 
cruel  inconsistency  of  love  and  duty,  of  the  things  wished 
with  the  thing  that  must  be  done,  was  felt,  the  more  would 
their  conduct  become  the  Pharisaic  counterpart  of  the 
higher  heroism.  They  could  not  allow  their  Judaism  to 
perish,  and  it  was  better  that  they  should  ruin  Christ 
than  that  He  should  ruin  it.  How  the  antagonism  of  idea 
became  an  antagonism  of  act  is  what  we  have  now  to 
study,  that  we  may  the  better  understand  the  gathering 
of  the  forces  that  were  so  soon  to  break  at  Jerusalem,  and 
in  the  cross. 

We  have,  then,  to  imagine  Jesus  living  and  teaching 
in  Galilee.  In  Jerusalem  the  jealousies  and  suspicions 
that  had  been  awakened  by  His  deeds  and  words  at  the 
feast  had  not  been  soothed  to  sleep.  His  career  in 
Galilee  was  watched,  His  sayings  duly  reported  and  con- 
sidered. The  conflict  He  had  shunned  rather  than 
courted  was  forced  on  Him,  penetrated  into  His  happy 
and  beneficent  seclusion.  In  the  crowds  that  assembled 
to  hear  Him,  dark  and  disputatious  faces  began  to  appear. 
His  fame  drew  those  who  suspected  and  disliked,  as  well 
as  those  who  loved  and  trusted.  The  enthusiasm  was 
still  in  flood,  but  save  in  the  innermost  circle  it  was  an 
enthusiasm  of  the  sense  rather  than  of  the  spirit.  The 
possessed  of  devils  had  been   dispossessed,  the   palsied 


174  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

strengthened,  the  lepers  cleansed,  the  blind  restored  to 
sight.  Jesus,  weary  of  miracles  and  the  curious  crowds 
that  followed  Him,  their  souls  in  their  eyes,  had  returned 
to  Capernaum.  Soon  the  house  was  filled,  the  door 
besieged,  and  Jesus  seized  the  meet  moment  to  speak  the 
words  of  truth.  While  He  preached,  friends  came  bear- 
ing a  man  "sick  of  the  palsy,"  but  finding  the  crowd  too 
great  to  get  near  Jesus,  mounted  on  the  roof,  and  let  the 
man  down  into  the  house.  It  is  possible  that  some  rela- 
tion may  have  existed  between  the  man's  physical  and 
His  spiritual  state.  Or  it  is  possible  that  Jesus  was  sick 
of  the  physical,  and  wished  to  escape  into  the  spiritual 
sphere,  by  working  a  moral  where  He  had  been  expected 
to  work  only  a  bodily  change.  Whatever  the  reason,  it 
is  certain  that  His  word  to  the  man  was,  not,  **  Be 
whole,"  but,  "  Son,  thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee."  Into  this 
saying  was  condensed  the  whole  question  of  His  claims. 
It  asserted  by  implication  His  idea  of  the  new  kingdom, 
His  right  to  be  the  king,  His  power  to  exercise  the 
highest  kingly  functions.  It  was  so  interpreted  by 
certain  scribes  who  were  present,  and  who  by  gesture 
or  otherwise  showed  their  denial  of  his  claims.  He 
blasphemed  —  forgiveness  was  the  prerogative  of  God. 
Christ's  answer  was  characteristic,  one  of  act  rather  than 
word.  The  Pharisee  believed  that  miracles  were  of  God 
^a  sign  from  heaven,  a  proof  of  its  inspiration  and  au- 
thority. So  Jesus,  calling  in  the  one  proof  they  admitted 
and  did  not  dare  to  deny,  said  to  the  sick  man,  "Arise, 
and  take  up  thy  bed."  Yet  there  is  no  insult  a  man 
resolved  not  to  be  convinced  so  much  resents  as  an 
argument  he  cannot  answer.  It  only  confirms  his 
antagonism  by  intensifying  his  hate.  The  scribes  might 
have  forgiven  the  blasphemy ;  the  miracle  that  proved  it 
sober  truth  they  could  not  forgive. 
The   conflict    thus   commenced    must    proceed.      The 


yESUS  AJSiD  THE  JEWS.  175 

offensiveness  of  Jesus  to  the  Pharisees  grew  daily.  His 
society  was  to  them  a  standing  affront.  He  was  preach- 
ing the  Messianic  kingdom,  yet  daring  to  associate  with 
"  publicans  and  sinners."  It  was  an  open  outrage  against 
their  theocratic  and  religious  idea.  Their  kingdom  of 
heaven  was  a  kingdom  of  the  Jews,  its  laws  those  Mosaic 
and  traditional  laws  they  so  fanatically  loved,  yet  so 
finely  contrived  to  elude  and  disobey.  Within  the  land 
and  over  the  people  sacred  to  Jahveh  no  alien  could 
righteously  rule.  He  was  their  only  lawful  sovereign. 
For  a  Gentile  to  exercise  regal  authority  in  Judaea  was 
for  Him  to  usurp  the  place  and  functions  of  God ;  for  a 
Jew  to  become  a  minister  or  agent  of  His  rule,  was  treason 
against  the  Most  High.  And  this  was  what  the  publican 
had  become.  He  farmed  and  raised  the  taxes  of  Caisar, 
not  only  so  acknowledged  the  authority  of  the  Gentile 
as  to  deny  the  authority  of  Jahveh,  but  also  extorted 
from  his  brethren  the  tributes  and  taxes  that  were  the 
signs  of  their  bondage.  And  so  the  Pharisee  as  a  patriot 
hated  the  publican  as  a  traitor,  while  as  a  son  of  Abraham 
and  the  law  he  hated  him  still  more  as  false  to  his  faith 
and  his  God.  And  so  the  publican  became  an  out-caste 
in  Israel,  detested  and  shunned  as  only  the  out-caste  can 
be.  Isolation  made  him  reckless,  exacting,  insolent. 
Excommunication  he  answered  by  extortion,  and  the 
more  extortionate  he  grew,  the  deeper  became  the 
rehgious  hate,  the  higher  the  barrier  which  excluded  him 
from  the  society  and  worship  of  Israel.  Yet,  though  the 
exclusion  made  him  worse,  it  could  not  disinherit  him  ; 
he  remained  a  child  of  Abraham,  with  the  instincts  that 
had  made  his  people  the  people  of  God  living  in  him 
neither  silent  nor  dumb.  But  they  craved  in  vain,  their 
yearning  but  nourished  the  despair  which  he  only  can 
feel  who  has  so  broken  caste  as  to  have  destroyed  all 
hope  of  restoration  or  return.     And  so  the  publicans  were 


176  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

the    pre-eminent    sinners    of    Judaism,   the    hating    and 
hated,  at  once  apostates  and  traitors. 

And  Jesus  invited  these  men  into  His  kingdom — nay, 
made  one  an  apostle,  a  minister  and  chosen  friend.  The 
act  was  grandly  declarative,  proved  that  Christ's  was  a 
spiritual  theocracy,  indifferent  to  accidental  or  civil  dis- 
tinctions, alive  to  the  spiritual  possibilities  or  realities  in 
men.  But  it  was  a  mortal  offence  to  the  Pharisees.  It 
contradicted  their  strongest  convictions,  crossed  their  most 
cherished  prejudices,  mocked  their  deepest  and  most 
righteous  hatreds.  It  must  have  been  with  an  altogether 
indescribable  horror  that  they  saw  One  whose  special 
mission  it  was  to  preach  the  kingdom  of  heaven  opening 
it  to  "  publicans  and  sinners."  Hence  came  many  con- 
flicts. The  first  thing  that  shocked  them  into  speech  was 
the  call  of  Matthew,  and  the  subsequent  feast  in  his 
house.  Christ's  answer  to  the  question,  **  Why  eateth 
your  Master  with  publicans  and  sinners  ?  "  **  They  that 
are  whole  need  not  a  physician,  but  they  that  are  sick," ' 
expressed  His  mission  as  He  understood  it,  showed  the 
essential  contrast  of  His  idea  to  theirs.  But  they  were 
too  possessed  with  their  own  to  comprehend  His  idea. 
They  knew  the  force  of  a  stinging  epithet,  and  named 
Him  *'  the  Friend  of  publicans  and  sinners."  But  their 
scorn  could  not  break  Him  from  His  friendship,  only 
wrung  from  Him  some  of  His  noblest  words.  Of  these, 
two  are  pictures  of  the  Pharisee,  presenting  him  as  he  is 
before  God  and  towards  man.  In  the  one  he  is  made  to 
appear  as  an  elder  brother,^  who  conceives  himself  to 
have  been  ever  obedient ;  entitled,  therefore,  to  everything 
his  father  has  to  give,  free  to  feel  angry  and  wronged 
when  a  younger  brother,  who  has  been  a  prodigal,  returns 
home  penitent  and  is  received  with  joy.     The  image  is 

»  Matt.  ix.  10-13  ;  Mark  ii.  14-17  ;  Luke  v.  27-32. 
«  Luke  XV.  25-32. 


JESUS  AND  THE  JEWS.  177 

most  moving,  eloquent,  real.  He  is  pictured  as  "  in  the 
field,"  no  idler,  a  toiler,  indeed  earning  his  very  inherit- 
ance. Then  he  comes  from  the  field  and  hears  in  the 
house  *'musick  and  dancing."  The  sound  of  joy  creates 
in  him  the  suspicion  of  wrong;  but  he  is  not  above 
suspecting  his  father,  and  does  not  believe  that  even  in 
his  house  gladness  can  be  quite  innocent.  When  he  hears 
the  cause  of  the  joy — "  what  these  things  mean  " — he  is 
angry,  and  will  not  go  in.  He  has  no  sense  of  brother- 
hood, no  love  for  the  lost  that  can  kindle  into  joy  over 
the  found.  He  is  altogether  absorbed  in  himself  and  in 
what  is  due  to  him.  So  when  the  father  entreats  him  to 
enter,  the  answer  is  characteristic.  **Lo!  these  many 
years  do  I  serve  thee,  neither  transgressed  I  at  any  time 
thy  commandments,  and  yet  thou  never  gavest  me  a  kid 
that  I  might  make  merry  with  my  friends."  There  it 
was,  unrequited  toil,  unrewarded  obedience,  the  very  gifts 
of  God  below  the  merits  of  the  man.  Then,  too,  it  is  a 
curious  obedience,  can  co-exist  with  its  opposite.  He  is, 
while  proclaiming  his  obedience,  disobedient ;  refuses  to 
obey  God  while  declaring  that  he  never  at  any  time  trans- 
gressed His  commandments.  The  obedience  he  fancied 
he  gave  to  God  was  really  given  to  his  own  passions  and 
prejudices.  He  was  pious  and  contented  only  so  long  as 
his  will  was  a  law  to  God.  In  him  dislike  to  his  brother 
became  distrust  of  his  father,  and  in  his  mind  to  receive 
the  one  he  hated  was  to  cast  away  himself.  The  Pharisee 
could  not  allow  the  God  who  loved  the  publican  to  love 
him,  could  not  condescend  to  be  received  by  a  Messiah 
who  received  sinners. 

The  other  picture  is  presented  in  the  parable  of  the 
Pharisee  and  the  Publican.^  Consciousness  of  virtue  lives 
alike  in  the  attitude  and  prayer  of  the  Pharisee.  He  has 
nothing  to  ask  from  God  ;  he  possesses  everything  that  is 

»  Luke  xviii.  9-14. 


178  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

worth  having.  His  prayer  is  a  thanksgiving  for  his  own 
perfection,  which  is  made  the  more  complete  by  contrast 
with  the  men  about  him,  and  especially  the  publican  before 
him.  He  is  not  like  other  men — an  extortioner,  or  unjust, 
or  an  adulterer,  or  even  like  the  publican  yonder ;  he  fasts 
twice  in  the  week,  and  give  tithes  of  all  he  possesses.  The 
self-complacency,  so  finely  flavoured  by  a  comprehensive 
uncharitableness,  is  inimitable.  He  is  good — the  rest  of 
mankind  bad.  He  thanks  God  he  is  so  good  that  he  may, 
in  a  euphemistic  way,  thank  himself.  When  he  comes  to 
the  list  of  his  positive  virtues,  the  catalogue  is  remarkable 
and  significant.  He  fasts  and  gives  tithes — these  are  his 
pre-eminent  virtues,  and  in  them  his  glory  and  his  con- 
demnation alike  live.  But  the  publican  stands  afar  off, 
ashamed  to  stand  amongst  godly  and  devout  men, 
conscious  of  sin,  guilty  and  humble  before  God,  with  no 
prayer  but  the  short  sharp  cry,  *' God  be  merciful  to  me 
the  sinner."  Christ's  moral  is — the  Publican  is  justified 
rather  than  the  Pharisee  :  in  the  one  there  was  the 
semblance  of  religion,  in  the  other  the  reality.  God 
accepts  penitence,  but  rejects  sacerdotal  arrogance;  and 
the  acceptance  of  God  authorizes  and  vindicates  acceptance 
by  His  Christ.  The  man  who  so  worships  has  a  right  to 
the  kingdom  which  God  recognizes  and  ratifies ;  and 
where  He  does  so,  what  matters  the  contradiction  of  the 
Pharisee  ? 

But  these  points  of  conflict  only  prepared  the  way  for 
others.  The  controversy  had  to  advance  from  Christ's 
personal  claims  and  authority,  from  the  nature  and 
constituents  of  His  kingdom,  to  His  and  its  relation  to  the 
old  Law.  If  there  was  anything  sacred  in  Judaism,  it  was 
the  Sabbath ;  the  most  awful  sanctities  and  sanctions 
hedged  it  round.  It  seemed  essential  to  their  monotheism, 
necessary  alike  to  their  faith  and  worship.  It  stood  to 
them  indissolubly  connected  with  the  origin  of  the  world 


yESUS  AND  THE  JEWS,  179 

and  of  their  nation.  The  Creator  had  rested  on  the 
seventh  day,  and  the  Jahveh  who  had  delivered  their 
fathers  from  Egypt  required  the  Sabbath  to  be  sacred  to 
Him.  They  were  bound  to  observe  it  by  re&sons  alike 
religious  and  political ;  it  was  the  symbol  and  seal  of  their 
right  to  be  the  people  of  God,  possessed  of  the  law  He 
instituted  that  they  might  obey.  But  the  day  of  rest  they 
had  made  toilsome  through  sacerdotal  observances  and 
minute  legal  regulations.  The  Sabbath  of  Jahveh  had 
been  lost  in  the  Sabbath  of  the  scribes.  The  greatest  of 
the  prophets  had  declared  that  He  could  not  endure  their 
"  new  moons  and  sabbaths ;  "  ^  but  the  scribes  proved 
mightier  than  the  prophet,  and  their  day  of  tyrannical 
prescriptions  and  observances  was  identified  with  God's. 
Against  this  idolatry  of  the  Sabbath  Christ  protested  in 
the  most  direct  and  practical  way.  He  walked  through 
the  cornfields,  and  allowed  His  disciples  to  pluck  the  ears 
of  corn.*  He  healed,^  and  in  one  case  made  the  man  He 
healed  carry  the  bed  on  which  he  had  before  lain.*  The 
scandal  was  great :  such  profanity  had  not  been  seen  in 
Israel.  Christ's  answers  were  most  significant,  each 
covering  the  whole  question  alike  of  His  truth  and  His 
relation  to  the  law.  In  the  first  case  His  justification  of 
Himself  was  elaborate  and  full,  (i)  The  act  was  not  un- 
precedented, {a)  David  had  done  a  so-called  profane 
thing  and  was  blameless — supreme  need  was  to  him 
perfect  justification.  And  (6)  the  priests  in  the  temple 
profane  the  Sabbath  :  what  is  proper  for  the  priests  is  not 
wrong  for  the  people.  (2)  Their  notion  of  the  Sabbath 
was  fatal  to  all  true  worship.  Mercy  was  the  best  service 
man  could  render  to  God — better  than  sacrifice.  (3)  They 
failed  to  understand  the  true  end  or  function  of  the 
Sabbath.     It  was  for  man;  man  was   not   made   for  it« 

*  Isa.  i.  14.  3  Matt.  xii.  10-13 ;  Luke  xiii.  10. 

■  Matt.  xii.  1-9  ;  Mark.  ii.  23.  4    John  v.  10. 


i8o  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

Laws  that  turned  it  into  a  burden,  destroyed  it ;  where  the 
service  of  God  was  made  toil,  man  could  not  rest.  (4)  The 
Son  of  Man  was  Lord  of  the  Sabbath — had  the  right  to 
order  it  for  man's  good,  to  institute  or  modify  it  so  as  to 
serve  his  true  weal.  In  the  second  case  Christ  but 
illustrated  His  own  principles.  If  man  needed  help,  he 
had  the  right  to  it.  If  the  sick  could  then  be  healed, 
they  ought  to  be  healed;  the  act  was  worthy  of  the  day. 
In  the  third  case  He  added  a  great  principle  to  His 
previous  justification — it  was  God-like  to  do  good  on  the 
Sabbath.  God's  rest  is  activity,  not  idleness.  He  has 
everywhere  and  always  been  working,  and  where  He  works 
man  need  not  fear  to  do  the  same.  The  action  of  God 
nobly  vindicates  the  action  of  His  Son. 

The  antagonism  was  thus  progressive,  advanced  from 
the  personal  claims  of  Jesus  to  the  truth  and  rights  of  the 
new  King  and  His  kingdom  as  against  the  law  of  the 
Scribes  and  the  Schools.  And  so  Jesus  was  to  the  Phari- 
see a  contradiction  that  became  ever  deeper  and  more 
exasperating.  But  while  His  words  and  conduct  became 
daily  more  offensive.  His  acts  grew  ever  more  remarkable. 
In  ordinary  circumstances  it  would  have  been  easy  to  trace 
His  sayings  to  the  inspiration  of  the  devil:  but  the  circum- 
stances were  not  ordinary.  His  antagonism  to  Satan  was 
as  direct  and  apparent  as  His  antagonism  to  them.  He 
was  miraculously  successful  in  casting  out  devils.  His 
power  over  them  could  not  be  denied.  He  was  thus  a 
cruel  paradox  to  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees.  His  words 
were  like  lies,  but  His  acts  were  like  the  evidences  of 
victorious  truth.  He  was  in  speech  like  one  who 
blasphemed,  but  in  action  like  the  very  Messiah.  They 
perceived  in  their  blind  way  that  speech  and  action  must 
have  a  common  root ;  both  must  be  alike  false  or  alike  true. 
The  cruel  dilemma  thus  presented  only  deepened  their 
exasperation.     They  resented   the   acts   as   an   insult,  a 


yESUS  AND  THE  JEWS,  i8i 

reflection  on  their  veracity.  They  had  either  to  abandon 
their  hostile  attitude,  or  frame  a  theory  of  the  acts  that 
would  not  only  justify,  but  demand  it.  Consistently 
enough  they  chose  the  latter.  The  acts  were  'as  evil  as 
the  speech ;  the  Actor,  like  the  Speaker,  was  in  league 
with  Satan.  They  said,  "  He  casts  out  devils  by  Beelze- 
bub.*' *  He  is  but  an  embodied  falsehood,  speaking  lies, 
working  a  lie,  professing  to  cast  out  Satan,  that  He  may 
the  better  serve  him.  But  the  charge  was  as  unwise  as 
unveracious.  The  answer  was  easy :  *'  If  Satan  cast  out 
Satan,  how  shall  his  kingdom  stand  ?  If  he  work  against 
himself,  how  can  his  works  serve  him  ?  Then,  if  I  cast 
out  devils  by  Beelzebub,  by  whom  do  your  disciples  cast 
them  out  ?  By  Beelzebub  too  ?  Let  them  be  your 
judges."  * 

The  cycle  was  completed ;  fanatical  resistance  to  the 
light  had  become  fanatical  denial  of  its  existence.  It  was 
little  wonder  that  Jesus  met  the  deputation  from  Jerusalem 
with  the  question,  "  Why  do  ye  transgress  the  command- 
ment of  God  by  your  tradition  ?  ...  Ye  hypocrites  !  well 
did  Esaias  prophesy  of  you,  saying,  This  people  draweth 
nigh  unto  Me  with  their  lips  ;  but  their  heart  is  far  from 
Me."  3  **  O  ye  hypocrites  !  ye  can  discern  the  face  of  the 
sky,  but  can  ye  not  discern  the  sign  of  the  times  ?"* 

«  Matt.  xii.  24.  3  Ibid.  xv.  3,  7,  8. 

»  Ibid.  xii.  25-27,  4  Ibid.  xvi.  y 


XI. 
THE  LATER  TEACHING. 

Looked  at  on  the  surface,  the  conflict  of  Jesus  with  the 
Jews  seems  but  an  ignoble  waste  of  the  noblest  Being  earth 
has  known.  And  in  many  respects  it  was  what  it  seemed. 
The  antagonists  of  Christ  were  poor  enough,  especially 
when  compared  with  Him.  Shallow,  selfish,  short-sighted 
men ;  bigots  in  creed  and  in  conduct ;  capable  of  no  sin 
disapproved  by  tradition,  incapable  of  any  virtue  unen- 
joined  by  it ;  too  respectable  to  be  publicans  and  sinners  ; 
at  once  too  ungenerous  to  forgive  sins  against  their  own 
order,  and  too  blind  to  see  sins  within  it — they  remain  for 
all  time  our  most  perfect  types  of  fierce  and  inflexible  de- 
votion to  a  worship  instituted  and  administered  by  man, 
but  of  relentless  and  unbending  antagonism  to  religion  as 
the  service  of  God  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  And  to  think  of 
our  holy  and  beautiful  Christ,  His  heart  the  home  of  a  love 
that  enfolded  the  world,  His  spirit  the  stainless  and  truth- 
ful mirror  of  the  Eternal,  His  mouth  dropping  with  every 
word  pearls  of  divinest  wisdom — to  think  of  Him  hated 
and  wasted  by  these  men,  is  to  think,  as  it  were,  of  the 
crown  of  God,  with  all  its  stars,  dimmed,  corroded,  dis- 
solved by  mists  bred  in  dismal  swamps  formed  by  the 
decayed  life  of  ancient  worlds.  The  conflict  of  evil  with 
good  is  inevitable  ;  we  dare  not  mourn  it,  dare  only  wel- 
come it  as  the  hard  but  necessary  way  to  peace  and  per- 
fection. But  as  the  issues  are  immense,  we  expect  the 
struggle  to  be  manifestly  immense  also.     If  the  Prince  of 


THE  LATER  TEACHING.  183 

God  stands  forth  to  fight,  we  cannot  but  wish  it  to  be  with 
a  God-like  adversary,  and  not  with  men  who  hold  tradition 
to  be  as  sacred  as  the  law  and  temple  of  their  God. 

But  the  ignoble  was  all  on  one  side ;  on  the  other  was  a 
magnanimity  that  only  became  the  more  magnanimous  in 
the  struggle  with  the  little  and  the  mean.  As  the  dark- 
ness deepened  round  the  Hero's  path  His  heroism  shone 
the  brighter ;  as  the  conflict  thickened  His  strength  be- 
came calmer,  mightier,  more  manifest.  His  consciousness 
grew  more  exalted  as  His  way  grew  more  troubled.  The 
shadows  that  fell  upon  His  spirit  were  pierced  and  pene- 
trated and  made  translucent  by  the  light  which  streamed 
from  within.  And  the  change  in  His  spirit  was  marked  by 
a  correspondent  change  in  His  teaching.  He  became 
sadder,  was  in  speech  as  in  soul  more  the  Man  of  Sorrows, 
despised  and  rejected  of  men ;  less  the  exalted  servant  of 
God  coming  in  beauty  over  the  mountains  and  through  the 
valleys  to  publish  peace.  The  contradiction  of  sinners 
was  the  prophecy  of  Calvary.  The  iron  had  entered  His 
soul,  and  His  heart  was  bearing  its  cross.  The  spring- 
time was  passed  ;  autumn  with  its  falling  leaves  and 
withered  flowers  had  come.  Cities,  once  zealous,  were 
cold  ;  crowds,  once  ardent,  were  suspicious ;  enemies, 
once  soft-spoken  and  fearful,  were  harsh  and  arrogant. 
But  just  when  men  were  falsest  and  feeblest  He  was  truest 
to  Himself.  His  person  came  into  the  foreground;  He 
Himself  became  the  great  theme  of  His  discourses.  He 
proclaimed  Himself  to  be  greater  than  David  or  Solomon, 
as  the  last  and  greatest  of  the  prophets,  as  above  the  law, 
as  superior  to  the  temple,  as  the  revealer  of  God.  He  de- 
clared Himself  to  be  the  Bread  of  Life,  the  Life  of  the 
World,  the  Light  of  the  World.  The  impending  suffer- 
ing He  glorified  ;  the  death  that  was  coming  so  surely  He 
interpreted  into  a  sacrifice  of  universal  efficacy  and  eternal 
worth.     The  gathering  clouds  left  His  soul  clear.     His 


1 84  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

confidence  in  His  cause  and  triumph  seemed  to  grow  in 
calmness  and  rise  in  strength  as  the  storm  increased. 
His  spirit  had  depths  storms  could  not  reach,  heights 
they  could  not  disturb.  The  fierce  wind  may  vex  the 
surface  of  the  ocean  till  its  waves  look  like  loose  and 
rolling  mountains,  but  down  fathoms  deep  the  waters  lie 
placid  as  the  lake  smiling  in  the  summer  sun.  The  clouds 
may  darken  the  sky,  and  speak  to  us  of  tempest  and 
thunder  and  gloom ;  but  away  above,  on  the  everlasting 
hills,  eternal  calm  and  soft  sunshine  are  making  radiant 
sleep.  So  while  human  passions  were  darkening  Christ's 
path,  and  human  enmities  were  preparing  the  doom  that 
was  to  be  His  glory,  sweet  peace  sat  like  the  blessed  angel 
of  God  within  His  spirit,  and  filled  it  with  celestial  light 
and  joy. 

The  conflict  of  Jesus  with  the  Jews  was  thus  fruitful  of 
the  most  opposite  results.  While  without  Him  it  created 
an  atmosphere  of  doubt,  suspicion,  and  estrangement, 
within  Him  it  marked  the  rise  of  a  clearer  and  more  cer- 
tain consciousness  of  His  nature  and  mission.  The  an- 
tagonism of  the  Pharisees  affected  the  people.  They 
could  hardly  imagine  that  the  men  who  had  been  to  their 
fathers  and  were  to  themselves  like  the  incarnated  wisdom 
of  the  past  could  be  altogether  wrong.  Names,  too, 
especially  when  coined  in  the  schools,  are  moral  forces  of 
a  very  powerful  order,  and  so  to  be  called  "  the  friend  of 
publicans  and  sinners,"  "  a  speaker  of  blasphemies,"  "  a 
Sabbath  breaker,"  a  child  and  agent  of  *'  Beelzebub,"  was 
to  be  enveloped  in  a  set  of  associations  that  only  the 
deepest  knowledge  and  truest  love  could  pierce  and  dis- 
perse. Then  other  influences  came  to  the  help  of  the 
custom  that  almost  compels  the  led  to  follow  the  leaders. 
Jesus  was  too  true  to  the  Divine  ideal  He  embodied  to 
gratify  the  wishes  or  fulfil  the  hopes  of  the  men  who 
thought  to  make  Him  an  idol.     The  idol  of  the  crowd 


THE  LATER  TEACHING,  185 

must  not  transcend  it ;  if  he  does,  the  passion  that 
prompted  to  worship  passes  into  the  fury  that  pants  to 
destroy.  To  be  hailed  by  a  people  that  did  not  under- 
stand Him,  must  have  been  to  Jesus  but  as  tfie  prelusive 
murmur  of  a  cry  that  was  to  end  in  the  shout,  **  Crucify 
Him!" 

Most  significantly  the  first  word  of  doubt  and  disappoint- 
ment comes  from  the  Baptist.  The  man  who  had  pro- 
claimed Jesus  as  the  Christ  was  also  the  man  who  sent 
to  ask,  "  Art  thou  he  who  should  come,  or  do  we  look  for 
another?"'  The  question  was  that  of  a  man  not  dis- 
illusioned, but  doubtful,  expectant,  wishful,  yet  afraid  that 
the  hope  which  grew  dearer  and  intenser  in  his  solitude 
might  prove  to  be  false.  He  saw  much  in  Jesus  to  justify 
it.  His  preaching.  His  call.  His  power  to  move  and  inspire 
the  people;  but  he  also  saw  much  to  condemn  it,  in  His 
obscurity.  His  refusal  to  exercise  political  power.  His  love 
of  seclusion  and  Galilee,  His  dislike  of  publicity  and  Jeru- 
salem. The  Baptist,  as  a  prophet,  could  admire  the  great 
Preacher ;  but,  as  an  ascetic,  could  only  doubt  the  claims 
and  authority  of  one  who  was  reputed  to  be  '*  gluttonous 
and  a  wine-bibber."  So  the  conflict  of  doubt  and  desire, 
fear  and  hope,  urged  him  to  make  the  touching  appeal  to 
Jesus,  to  which  Jesus  so  finely  answered—"  Go  and  show 
John  those  things  which  ye  do  hear  and  see  :  the  blind 
receive  their  sight,  and  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are 
cleansed,  and  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are  raised  up,  and 
the  poor  hare  the  gospel  preached  to  them."  2 

But  the  people  did  not  halt  and  hesitate  like  John. 
More  governed  by  impulse,  less  possessed  by  an  exalted 
and  spiritual  faith,  they  took  an  ungratified  wish  for  an 
unfulfilled  hope.  They  did  not  feel,  like  the  Baptist,  the 
Divine  beauty  that  livea  even  in  the  blurred  image  of  Jesus 
presented  to  him  by  curious  report,  but  they  hastily  con- 
*  Matt.  xi.  3.  *  Ibid.  xi.  4,  5. 

:3 


£86  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

eluded  that  He  who  was  not  a  Messiah  in  their  sense 
could  be  no  Messiah  at  all.  So  when  Jesus  returned  to 
the  cities  where  His  mightiest  works  had  been  done,  He 
found  coldness :  they  refused  repentance,  and  He  an- 
nounced judgment.'  But  even  while  the  pain  of  desertion 
was  freshest  and  most  bitter,  the  consciousness  of  Divine 
Sonship  was  deepest  and  most  real,  and  He  knew  Himself 
as  the  Son  who  knew  the  Father,  whom  the  Father  knew, 
the  Revealer  of  His  word  and  will  to  the  world.^ 

Nowhere  we  find  the  root  and  source  of  the  peculiarities 
that  distinguish  Christ's  later  teaching.  It  is  more  per- 
sonal than  the  earlier,  more  concerned  with  the  claims 
and  meaning  of  His  person,  the  reason  of  His  coming,  the 
authority  of  His  words,  and  purpose  of  His  work.  In  the 
very  degree  men  turned  from  Him  the  face  of  the  Father 
turned  to  Him,  and  so  His  filial  consciousness  became 
fuller,  clearer,  more  intense.  The  two  things,  the  growth 
of  isolation  and  antagonism  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
growth  of  this  fuller  consciousness  of  His  person  and  work 
on  the  other,  are  variously  indicated  in  the  Gospels.  The 
attempt  had  evidently  been  made  to  excite  the  jealousy 
and  fear  of  Herod,  to  rouse  him  to  action  by  representing 
Jesus  as  a  dangerous  political  character,  plotting  and 
teaching  treason.^  The  death  of  John  was  premonitory ; 
and  Jesus  interpreted  it  as  meaning  that  the  man  who  did 
not  spare  the  Baptist  would,  when  his  passions  were  roused, 
as  little  spare  Him.^  And  so  with  an  unfriendly  people 
and  a  jealous  ruler,  prone  to  swift  and  cruel  deeds,  Galilee 
became  to  Him  an  uncongenial  home  ;  and  He  "departed 
into  the  coasts  of  Tyre  and  Sidon."^  It  was  in  those 
days  of  wandering  and  desertion,  when  He  had  come  into 
the  region  of  Csesarea  Philippi,  that  He  asked  His 
disciples,  "  Whom  do  men  say  that  I,  the  Son  of  man, 

«  Matt.  xi.  20-24.  3  Luke  xiii.  31.  s  Matt.  xv.  21. 

■  Ibid.  xi.  25-27.  4  Matt.  xiv.  i,  2,  13. 


THE  LATER  TEACHING.  187 

am  ?  "  '  The  answer  showed  the  conflict  of  opinion,  anrl 
elicited  the  further  question — **  But  whom  say  ye  that  1 
am  ?  '*  Peter's  answer — significant  of  what  his  most 
esoteric  teaching  had  been,  "  Thou  art  the  Ch'rist,  the  Son 
of  the  living  God  " — was  hailed  and  ratified  by  the  singular 
and  suggestive  words,  "Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  Bar-jona: 
for  flesh  and  blood  hath  not  revealed  it  unto  thee,  but  My 
Father  which  is  in  heaven."  This  remarkable  response 
not  only  recognized  and  proclaimed  the  reality  of  His 
Christhood  and  Sonship,  and  faith  in  them  as  the  necessary 
condition  alike  of  discipleship  and  beatitude,  but  also  as- 
cribed the  faith  expressed  in  the  confession  to  the  special 
inspiration  of  God.  The  more  perfectly  the  consciousness 
of  His  disciples  reflected  His  own,  the  more  certain  was 
He  that  His  Father  was  in  them  as  in  Him,  that  human 
apostasy  only  contributed  to  the  reality  of  His  Divine 
work.  But  while  antagonism  developed  in  Himself  and 
His  disciples  this  higher  consciousness,  it  also  made  the 
dark  and  dread  forms  of  the  future  stand  out  before  His 
eye.  "  From  that  time  forth  He  began  to  show  "  to  the 
men  who  had  confessed  that  He  was  "  the  Christ,  the  Son 
of  the  living  God,'*  "  how  that  He  must  go  unto  Jerusalem, 
and  suffer  many  things  of  the  elders  and  chief  priests  and 
scribes,  and  be  killed,  and  be  raised  again  the  third  day."* 
The  shadow  of  the  cross  never  lifted  from  His  soul ;  it 
saddened  His  spirit  and  deepened  the  meaning  of  His 
speech.  His  words  became,  as  they  had  never  been  before, 
expository  of  Himself,  of  His  relation  to  God  and  man,  to 
death  and  life.  And  so  the  later  is  unlike  the  earlier 
teaching.  He  speaks  less  like  a  King  proclaiming  His 
kingdom,  enforcing  obedience,  creating  in  man  the  sense 
of  benevolent  order  and  beneficent  law,  than  like  a  Re- 
deemer who  redeems  by  death,  a  Deliverer  who  delivers 
by  the  sacrifice  of  Himself.  And  so  within  the  apparent 
*  Matt.  xvi.  13.  *  Ibid.  xvi.  21. 


i88  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

history  He  helps  us  to  see  a  real  Divine  presence  and 
purpose.  While  priests  and  rulers  were  to  their  own 
infamy  and  disaster  plotting  His  death,  He  was  preparing 
to  make  it  the  symbol  of  His  truth,  of  His  might  to  save. 

Now  here  we  have  the  point  of  view  from  which  we 
must  try  to  interpret  His  teaching  as  a  transcript  or 
explication  of  His  own  consciousness.  His  speech  is  the 
incarnation  of  His  spirit,  the  mirror  of  His  thought.  His 
person  is  reflected  in  His  words ;  the  worth  of  the  one 
explains  the  worth  of  the  other. 

His  words  do  not  expound  a  theology — they  institute  a 
religion.  This  is  their  essential  and  distinctive  character- 
istic. In  the  Acts  and  the  Epistles  we  have  a  theology : 
the  disciples  explain  the  mission  and  sayings  of  their 
Master,  especially  in  their  relation  to  the  mind  and  will 
of  God,  and  to  the  state  and  destinies  of  men.  But  the 
Gospels  simply  record  the  words  which  reveal  the  con- 
sciousness of  Jesus,  which  helps  us,  as  it  were,  to  stand 
within  His  spirit  and  know  the  Person  who  created  our 
religion  as  He  knew  Himself.  And  it  is  because  His 
words  stand  in  this  relation  to  His  Person  that  they  are 
so  creative.  It  is  of  far  greater  importance  that  we  know 
what  Jesus  thought  of  Himself  than  that  we  know  what 
Paul  thought  of  Him;  what  the  Son  knew  of  the  Father 
is  of  diviner  worth  to  the  world  than  what  the  disciples 
thought  concerning  Him.  Religion  precedes  theology; 
every  theology  runs  back  into  a  religion,  and  every  spiri- 
tual religion  into  a  creative  personality;  and  so  the  Person 
and  words  of  Jesus  underlie  alike  the  religion  of  Christ 
and  the  discourses  and  discussions  of  His  apostles.  It  is 
more  possible  to  interpret  the  theology  through  the  religion 
than  the  religion  through  the  theology.  Paul  is  inexplic- 
able without  Christ,  but  Christ  is  not  unintelligible  without 
Paul.  The  disciple  explains  the  Master  only  after  the 
Master  has  explained  the  disciple. 


THE  LATER  TEACHING,  189 

We  can  hardly  approach  the  words  of  Christ  without 
reverence.  As  we  study  them  we  almost  feel  as  if  we 
were  overhearing  His  speech,  or  looking  into  His  spirit, 
or  watching  the  ebb  and  flow  of  emotion  on  H'is  wondrous 
face.  Theologians  of  a  certain  school  have  almost  resented 
the  attempt  to  present  Christ  the  Teacher,  as  if  it  were 
better  for  Christian  thought  to  be  busied  with  His  work 
than  with  His  words.  But  what  without  His  teaching 
would  His  Person  and  death  signify?  Are  they  not 
mutually  necessary,  reciprocally  explicative  ?  Would  not 
His  teaching  be  aimless  without  His  death?  Does  not 
His  death  grow  luminous  only  as  He  Himself  is  made  its 
interpreter  ?  His  words  have  been  a  sort  of  infinite 
wonder  to  the  world,  a  kind  of  Divine  heart  and  conscience 
to  it.  They  are  but  few  ;  we  can  read  in  an  hour  all  of 
His  thought  that  survives  in  the  forms  human  art  has 
created  to  clothe  and  immortalize  the  human  spirit.  Nor 
was  He  careful  to  preserve  them,  wrote  no  word,  com- 
manded no  word  to  be  written  ;  spoke,  as  it  were,  into  the 
listening  air  the  words  it  was  to  hear  and  preserve  for  all 
time.  And  the  speech  thus  spoken  into  the  air  has  been 
like  a  sweet  and  subtle  Divine  essence  in  the  heart  of 
humanity.  If  we  imagine  a  handful  of  sweet  spices  cast 
into  the  ocean  subduing  its  salt  and  brackish  bitterness, 
and  making  it  for  evermore  pleasant  to  the  taste  ;  or  a 
handful  of  fragrance  thrown  into  the  air  spreading  and 
penetrating  till  it  filled  the  atmosphere  of  every  land,  and 
made  it  healing  and  grateful  as  the  breath  of  Paradise  ; — 
we  may  have  an  imperfect  physical  analogy  of  what 
Christ's  words  have  been,  and  what  His  teaching  has  done 
for  the  thought  and  spirit  of  man.  Had  the  words  of  any 
other  great  teacher  perished  ;  had  the  wisdom  of  Socrates, 
or  the  science  of  Aristotle,  or  the  eloquence  of  Cicero,  or 
the  poetry  of  iEschylus  or  Sophocles  been  lost,  our  world 
had  still  been  little  different  from  what  it  is  to-day.     But 


I90  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

had  the  words  of  Christ  vanished  into  silence,  passed  into 
the  great  halls  of  oblivion,  or  had  they  never  been  spoken, 
our  world  had  been  quite  other  than  it  is,  and  been  far 
from  as  wise  and  good  as  it  is  now.  So  great  and  infinite 
in  value  have  been  those  teachings,  in  quantity  smallest 
of  fragments,  in  quality  greatest  and  most  priceless  of  the 
treasures  that  have  enriched  the  world. 

In  proceeding  to  details,  we  had  better  start  with  Christ^s 
teaching  as  regards  Himself.  Here  our  first  duty  must 
be  to  interpret  the  two  descriptive  titles,  *'  Son  of  man '' 
and  *'  Son  of  God." 

I.  *'  Son  of  man."  This  title  is  in  the  New  Testament 
significantly  enough  used,  with  one  exception,  by  Christ 
alone.  The  exception  occurs  in  the  speech  of  Stephen,  in 
the  very  last  words  he  is  allowed  to  utter.  "  Behold,"  he 
cries,  "  I  see  the  heavens  opened,  and  the  Son  of  man 
standing  on  the  right  hand  of  God." '  The  position  is 
remarkable  and  significant,  expresses  dignity,  dominion, 
authority.  And  these  are  ideas  that  are  usually  associated 
with  the  title,  and  that  it  was  manifestly  intended  to  con- 
note. Thus  it  is  said,  the  Father  "hath  given  Him 
authority  to  execute  judgment,  because  He  is  the  Son  of 
man."*  In  one  of  the  great  eschatological  discourses  we 
read,  "  As  the  lightning  cometh  out  of  the  east,  and  shineth 
even  unto  the  west,  so  shall  also  the  coming  of  the  Son  of 
man  be ;  "  and  He  is  to  be  seen  '*  coming  in  the  clouds  of 
heaven,  with  power  and  great  glory."  ^  The  pre-eminent 
dignity  the  title  is  meant  to  express  is  evident  from  the  text 
where  it  first  occurs :  "The  foxes  have  holes,  and  the  birds 
of  the  air  have  nests ;  but  the  Son  of  man  hath  not  where 
to  lay  His  head."  *  The  force  of  the  passage  lies  evidently 
in  the  contrast  of  right  with  fact,  of  ideal  position  with 
real  experience.     These  usages  place  us  on  the  line  along 

*  Acts  vii.  56.  S  Matt.  xxiv.  27,  30. 

'  John  V.  27.  <  Ibid.  viii.  20. 


THE  LATER  TEACHING,  191 

which  the  explanation  must  be  soug^ht.  The  title  belongs 
to  one  who  possesses  authority,  and  can  execute  judgment 
and  first  appears  in  the  later  prophetic  literature.  Daniel 
says,'  "  I  saw  in  the  night  visions,  and,  behold,  6ne  like  the 
Son  of  man  came  with  the  clouds  of  heaven/'  The  vision  is 
one  of  a  cycle  in  which  symbolical  expression  has  been 
given  to  the  essential  characters  of  the  great  empires  of 
the  past  and  present.  The  symbols  employed  were  beasts: 
the  first,  a  lion  with  eagle's  wings;  the  second,  a  bear, 
with  ribs  riven  from  a  side  in  its  teeth;  the  third,  a  leopard, 
four-winged,  four-headed ;  the  fourth,  a  mythical  beast, 
*'  dreadful  and  terrible  and  strong  exceedingly.'*  The 
empires  thus  symbolized  are  brutal,  based  on  mere  fierce 
strength.  When  their  dominion  ceases,  the  one  "  like  the 
Son  of  man  '*  comes  in  the  clouds  of  heaven  ;  *'  and  there 
was  given  Him  dominion,  and  glory,  and  a  kingdom,  that 
all  people,  nations,  and  languages  should  serve  Him."^ 
The  meaning  is  evident :  the  symbols  of  the  old  empires 
were  beasts,  but  the  symbol  of  the  new  Divine  kingdom  is 
"  the  Son  of  man."  Its  character  was  humanity,  as  theirs 
was  inhumanity;  it  is  personified  in  gentle  and  forethought- 
ful reason,  as  they  were  personified  in  cruel  and  selfish 
force.  "The  Son  of  man"  institutes  a  kingdom  that 
carries  out  the  purposes  of  God  as  to  man,  and  realizes  in 
humanity  His  reign. 

The  title  thus  emphasizes  the  humanity  of  Him  who 
bears  it,  but  a  humanity  that  accomplishes  a  Divine  work, 
creates  and  controls  a  society  which  is  so  finely  human 
because  so  entirely  a  realization  of  the  thought  or  mind  of 
God  as  to  man.  Schleiermacher  rightly  said :  "  Christ 
would  not  have  adopted  thistitle  had  He  not  been  conscious 
of  a  complete  participation  in  human  nature.  But  His  use 
of  it  would  have  been  meaningless  had  He  not  had  a  right 
to  it  which  other  men  could  not  possess.  And  conse- 
»  Dan.  vii.  13.  »  Ibid.  vii.  14. 


192  STUDIES  TN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

quently  the  meaning  was  a  pregnant  one,  marking  the 
distinctive  differences  between  Him  and  other  men." ' 
These  differences  show  the  powers  and  prerogatives  that 
belonged  to  the  title,  and  the  duties  they  involved.  "  The 
Son  of  man  "  is  the  bond  between  earth  and  heaven,  be- 
longs in  an  equal  degree  to  both ;  He  is  the  medium 
through  which  God  reaches  man  and  man  reaches  God.* 
As  the  One  who  unites  and  unifies  earth  and  heaven.  He 
is  the  Source  of  the  Divine  life  in  man,  is  the  Light  that 
creates,  the  Bread  that  maintains,  life  in  the  world. ^  As 
the  Creator  of  the  new  society,  the  Founder  of  the  Divine 
kingdom,  He  has  the  right  to  repeal  whatever  impedes  its 
progress,  to  modify  or  adapt  to  its  service  ^  old  institutions 
like  the  Sabbath.  He  must,  too,  exercise  rule,  see  that 
His  citizens  are  worthy  of  His  city.^  If  to  exercise 
authority  be  His  right,  to  obey  is  man's  duty ;  and  con- 
fession becomes  the  subjects  of  the  King.^  But  these 
powers  and  prerogatives  are  rooted  in  sacrifice.  Without 
death,  without  resurrection,  *'  the  Son  of  man "  cannot 
fulfil  His  mission,  carry  through  His  Divine  work.7  He 
suffers  that  He  may  save;  by  death  He  gives  His  life  a 
ransom  for  the  many.^ 

The  title,  so  often  and  so  emphatically  used,  enables  us  to 
see  what  Christ  conceived  Himself  to  be,  and  where  He 
believed  Himself  to  stand :  He  affirmed  that  He  possessed 
our  common  human  nature  :  He  was  a  "  Son.**  But  He 
also  affirmed  His  pre-eminence — "  the  Son  of  man.'*  Other 
persons  had  been,  or  were,  sons  of  individual  men,  members 
of  particular  families  or  nations ;  but  Jesus,  as  ''  the  Son  of 
man,"  was  no  man's  son,  was  the  child  of  humanity;  be- 

I  Schleiermacher,  Glaubenslehre^  ii.  91,  3rd  edition. 
'  John  i.  51 ;  iii.  13;  vi.  62;  viii.  28.     s  Matt.  xiii.  41. 
3  Ibid.  vi.  53.  ^  Ibid.  xvi.  13. 

♦  Matt.  xii.  8.  7  Ibid.  xvii.  9,  12,  22,  23  ;  xx.  18. 

8  Ibid,  xviii.  11  ;  Mark  xiv.  21-25. 


THE  LATER  TEACHING,  193 

longed  to  no  age,  but  to  all  ages ;  to  no  family  or  people, 
but  to  mankind.  He  is,  as  the  Divine  Ideal  realized, 
universal  and  everlasting,  an  individual  who  is,  in  a  sense, 
humanity. 

The  title  is,  in  a  manner,  translated  and  interpreted  by 
Paul  in  the  phrases,  "the  last  Adam,"  ''the  second  Man."^ 
Adam  failed  to  become  w^hat  God  intended  him  to  be, 
was  only  a  "  living  soul,"  did  not  become  *'  a  life-giving 
spirit."  His  sons  were  also  failures,  and  earth,  though 
built  to  be  the  home  of  humanity,  had  never  seen 
humanity  realized.  Bat  Christ  came  and  realized  it,  ap- 
peared as  the  vital  form  of  the  Divine  idea,  the  articulated 
image  of  the  Divine  dream.  And  so  the  "last  Adam" 
was  greater  than  the  first,  "  a  quickening  spirit,"  able  to 
vivify  those  that  were  as  good  as  dead.  Humanity  was 
like  a  colossal  aloe,  growing  slowly  through  many  cen- 
turies, throwing  out  many  an  abortive  bud,  but  blossoming 
at  length  into  "the  second  Man,"  who  remains  its  forever 
fragrant  and  imperishable  flower. 

2.  The  "  Son  of  God."  This  title  was  less  common  on 
the  lips  of  Christ,  but  was  frequent  with  the  apostles, 
with  whom  it  assumes  a  peculiar  meaning,  especially  when 
qualified  by  ^ovo^yevrj^;  and  tSto?.  As  used  by  Christ,  it 
occurs  only  in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  and  expresses  not 
simply  a  figurative,  but  an  essential  filial,  relation  to  God. 
The  Jews  so  understand  it,  and  charge  Him  with  blas- 
phemy for  daring  to  use  it.^  One  passage  in  the  first 
Synoptic  ^  shows  that  the  use  was  no  peculiarity  of  the 
Johannean  Christ.  The  ideas  it  connotes  are  finely  ex- 
pressed in  the  great  filial  confession  recorded  by  Matthew: 
"No  man  knoweth  the  Son,  But  the  Father;  neither 
knoweth  any  man  the  Father,  save  the  Son,  and  he  to 
whomsoever  the  Son  will  reveal   Him."  ^     The  mutual 

*  I  Cor.  XV.  45,  47.  3  Matt,  xxvii.  43. 

»  John  xix.  7.  4  Ibid.  xi.  27. 


194  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

knowledge  is  absolute :  Father  and  Son  know  each  other 
as  they  alone  can  who  never  were  but  face  to  face  and 
heart  to  heart.  The  knowledge  the  Son  possesses  of  the 
Father  He  possesses  that  He  may  communicate;  He 
knows  God  that  He  may  make  Him  known.  Where  His 
knowledge  is  received,  His  spirit  is  born ;  to  know  tlie 
Father  as  the  Son  knows  Him,  is  to  love  as  the  Son  loves. 
In  this  filial  confession  the  High  Priest's  prayer  is  antici- 
pated ;  the  world  that  does  not  know  the  Father  is  to  be 
brought  to  the  knowledge  of  Him  through  the  Son.^  And 
here  we  can  see  the  truths  that  meet  and  blend  in  the 
titles.  '*  The  Son  of  God,"  through  His  essential  relation 
to  the  Father,  is  the  vehicle  of  true  and  absolute  knowledge 
concerning  Him  ;  "  the  Son  of  man,"  through  His  essen- 
tial relation  with  humanity,  is  the  medium  of  its  living 
union  with  God.  The  first  title  denotes  Christ  as  God's 
mediator  with  man,  the  second  denotes  Him  as  man's 
mediator  with  God. 

Christ's  common  use  of  the  one  title  and  rare  use  of  the 
other  was  a  custom  beautifully  true  to  His  nature.  It 
shows  how  intensely  His  conciousness  had  realized  His 
affinity  with  man,  how  He  wished  men  to  feel  His  and 
their  community  of  nature.  It  was  by  His  humanity 
that  He  hoped  to  lift  and  save  men.  The  sense  of  our 
kinship  with  God  through  Christ  is  our  regeneration. 

It  was  a  peculiar  and  transcendent  consciousness  that 
could  be  expressed  in  the  titles  "  Son  of  God  "  and  "  Son 
of  man;"  and  He  who  so  conceived  Himself  showed  He 
had  a  mission'  worthy  of  His  transcendent  Personality.  Very 
early  He  had  declared  His  judicial  authority  and  functions, 
asserted  and  exercised  His  right  to  forgive  sins,  advanced 
His  claim  to  the  faith  and  homage  of  Israel.^  But  these 
general  statements  could  not  satisfy  His  consciousness : 
truth  required  Him  to  become  more  specific  and  personal. 

*  John  xvii.  25,  26.         «  Matt.  vii.  23  ;  ix.  1-8  ;  x.  5,  ff ;  xi.  19-24. 


THE  LATER  TEACHING,  195 

While  He  is  the  least  self-conscious  of  teachers,  He  is  of 
all  teachers  the  most  conscious  of  Himself;  while  the 
least  egotistical)  the  most  concerned  with  His  own  Person. 
He  conceived  His  person  to  be  a  supreme  necessity  to  the 
world  :  He  is  the  Saviour  of  the  lost;  He  is  the  Shepherd, 
now  giving  His  life  for  the  sheep,  now  returning  with  the 
rescued  lamb  in  His  arms.  The  death  that  is  to  come 
to  Him  by  wicked  hands  cannot  defeat  His  mission,  can 
only  help  to  fulfil  it ;  it  is  to  mark  the  culmination  of  His 
sacrifice :  it  is  to  be  the  condition  and  symbol  of  victory. 
The  theme  of  Christ's  later  teaching  was  Christ,  and  there 
is  no  finer  witness  to  His  truth  than  this:  while  His  teach- 
ing is  concerned  with  Himself  it  is  never  selfish,  remains 
infinitely  remote  from  egoism,  is  penetrated  by  the  sub- 
limest  universalism.  To  speak  of  Himself  is  the  highest 
boon  He  can  confer  on  the  race,  for  the  words  that  unfolded 
the  consciousness  of  His  Divine  Sonship  are  the  only 
words  that  have  been  able  to  create  a  conscious  Divine 
Sonship  in  the  race. 

Round  this  centre  the  varied  elements  of  His  teaching 
beautifully  crystallize.  Out  of  His  twofold  relation,  to 
God  and  man,  springs  what  He  has  to  say  of  both.  The 
Son  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father  declares  Him,  shows 
Him  mindful  of  sinful  man,  seeking  him,  receiving  him 
with  a  weeping  joy  that  makes  all  heaven  glad.  The 
"  Son  of  man  "  reveals  man  to  himself,  shows  the  trans- 
cendent worth  of  the  soul  He  loves  to  save,  makes  man 
conscious  of  the  infinite  possibilities  of  good  within  him,  of 
the  Divine  affinities  that  sleep  in  His  nature.  The  Person 
that  manifests  the  Divine  and  the  human  in  beautiful  and 
holy  unity,  fitly  shows  how  God  and  man  can  sweetly  meet, 
and  rejoice  in  each  other  with  exceeding  great  joy.  He 
who  is,  as  it  were,  our  virtues  incorporated  is  the  fit 
teacher  of  duty,  a  voice  gentle  where  most  authoritative, 
making  its  most  imperative  commands  as  sweet  as  reason- 


S96  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

able.  And  so  person  and  word  combine  to  bring  round 
the  fulfilment  of  His  grand  prayer  :  **  That  they  may  be  all 
one ;  as  Thou,  Father,  art  in  me,  and  I  in  Thee,  that  they 
also  may  be  one  in  us :  that  the  world  may  believe  that 
Thou  hast  sent  me."  * 

'John  xvii.  at. 


XII. 

THE  LATER  MIRACLES. 

The  thought  and  action  of  Christ  so  lived  in  harmony 
that  neither  could  move  without  the  other ;  the  progress 
of  one  was  the  progress  of  both.  Hence  the  very  qualities 
that  distinguish  His  later  from  His  earlier  teaching  dis- 
tinguish His  later  from  His  earlier  works.  In  the  very 
degree  that  the  former  becomes,  in  the  region  of  the  spirit, 
transcendental,  expressive  of  a  higher  consciousness  and 
diviner  claims,  the  latter  become,  in  the  region  of  nature, 
the  more  extraordinary  revelations  of  the  Son  of  God 
that  had  been  realized  in  the  Son  of  man.  We  may 
name  the  earlier  the  less,  the  later  the  greater,  miracles ; 
but  we  attach  to  these  terms  ideas  almost  the  very  oppo- 
site of  those  the  Evangelists  would  have  attached.  We 
measure  the  greatness  of  a  miracle  by  the  degree  in  which 
it  departs  from  the  order  of  nature,  but  the  Evangelists  by 
the  degree  in  which  it  manifested  the  nature  and  mind  of 
Christ.  To  them  it  was  not  the  contra-natural  that  sur- 
prised, but  the  manifested  Christ  that  satisfied.  The 
action  became  Him,  and  in  the  becoming  action  the 
Actor  showed  His  essential  character,  declared  His  native 
and  inherent  qualities. 

The  Evangelists,  then,  did  not  look  at  the  miracles 
through  our  ideas  of  nature,  but  through  their  own  idea 
of  Christ ;  and  only  where  their  idea  is  accepted  as 
reasonable  can  their  history  be  regarded  as  veracious. 
Our  physicists  say,  the  same  law  that  m.oulds  a  dewdrop 
rouDds  a  world.     The  law  that  brings  a  stone  to  the  earth 


198  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OE  CHRIST. 

binds  the  planets  to  their  spheres.  In  the  processes 
of  nature  there  is  no  great  and  no  little.  Force  is  one, 
everywhere  changing,  everywhere  conserved,  its  action 
illustrated  and  its  strength  expressed  in  the  minutest  as 
in  the  mightiest  physical  phenomena.  As  the  physicists 
conceive  force  in  nature,  the  Evangelists  conceived  energy 
in  Christ.  To  the  one  as  to  the  other,  to  create  life  was 
as  easy  as  to  ripen  the  grape  or  form  the  leaf.  The  sub- 
dued fever  and  the  stilled  storm,  the  healed  paralytic  and 
the  revived  Lazarus,  were  each  equally  possible  to  the 
power  immanent  in  Christ ;  they  were  marvellous,  not 
as  departures  from  the  order  of  nature,  but  as  revelations 
of  the  nature  He  possessed.  And  so  the  Evangelical 
narratives  are  distinguished  by  a  historical  sobriety  of 
form  in  marked  contrast  to  their  extraordinary  contents, 
utterly  unlike  the  humorous  gravity,  the  conscious  inno- 
cence of  exaggeration  or  incongruity,  that  looks  so 
naively  out  of  our  ancient  nursery  or  mythical  tales. 
Our  Gospels,  while  they  describe  miracles,  are,  as  it  were, 
without  the  atmosphere  of  the  miraculous,  and  narrate 
events  that  they  feel  to  be  in  fullest  harmony  with  the 
wondrous  Person  they  pourtray.  Pascal  said,^  "  Jesus 
Christ  speaks  the  greatest  things  so  simply,  that  it  seems 
as  if  He  had  never  thought  upon  them."  That  spon- 
taneous unpremeditated  speech  was  His  glory,  proof  that 
His  words  reflected  a  consciousness  which  knew  no 
struggle,  that  His  being  and  truth  were  so  transparent 
to  Himself  that  His  claims  were  but  as  fruits  of  nature. 
His  words  like  fragrances  flung  into  the  air  by  His  spirit 
as  it  blushed  into  perfect  flower.  And  the  simplicity 
which  distinguishes  the  Master's  speech  marks  the  dis- 
ciples' history ;  and  for  the  same  reason — each  is  con- 
scious that  the  extraordinary  and  miraculous  is  to  the 
Person  concerned  but  the  ordinary  and  normal.  Their 
*  Pensdes  et  Lettres,  ii.  319  (Faugcre). 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES.  199 

faith  in  Christ  made  them  insensible  to  the  impossibilities 
of  the  physicist,  and  the  narratives  reflect  alike  in  matter 
and  manner  the  faith  of  their  authors. 

But  their  way  of  looking  at  events  through  their  idea 
of  Christ  gives  to  the  Evangelists  not  only  a  fine  sim- 
plicity and  realism  of  narrative — the  more  remarkable 
that  their  history  is  simply  the  most  extraordinary  ever 
written  or  believed  by  man  ;  but  also  a  fine  consistency 
in  their  presentation  of  Jesus,  a  consistency  the  more 
striking  and  significant  that  it  seems  on  their  part  uncon- 
scious and  undesigned.  His  thought  and  action  did  not 
simply  move  in  harmony ;  each  seemed  in  its  successive 
phases  but  a  transcript  of  the  other.  The  more  He 
asserts  in  His  teaching  His  personal  pre-eminence,  the 
more  do  His  acts  seem  to  declare  it.  As  His  speech 
became  more  egoistic,  therefore  more  theological,  without 
becoming  any  less  ethical,  His  acts  became  declarative 
of  a  personality  transcendent  alike  as  regards  nature  and 
man.  The  ethical  import  of  parables  like  the  Prodigal 
Son,  the  Rich  Man  and  Lazarus,  and  the  Good  Samaritan, 
is  as  exalted  and  pure  as  that  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount ;  but  the  theological  import  of  the  former  is 
greater,  marked  by  deeper  insight  into  the  character  and 
aims  of  God,  into  the  spirit  and  destinies  of  man.  The 
discourse  to  Nicodemus  is  much  more  elementary  than 
the  great  Johannean  discourses  to  the  disciples,  speaks 
less  of  the  Son's  essential  relation  to  the  Father,  or  His 
organic  connection  with  man.  There  are  no  indications 
in  it  of  truths  like  this  :  **  I  and  the  Father  are  one  ;  " 
**  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the  Father;  "  or  this, 
"  I  am  the  vine,  ye  are  the  branches ;  "  or  this,  *'  If  I  go 
not  away,  the  Comforter  will  not  come  unto  you  ;  but  if 
I  depart,  I  will  send  Him  unto  you."'  In  the  later 
teaching  of  Christ  His  Person  is  thus  made  to  become 
'  John  X.  30  ;  xiv.  9  ;  xv.  i  ;  xvi.  7. 


200  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

explicative  of  God,  redemptive  of  man,  and  creative  of 
peaceful  and  happy  relations  between  the  two.  And 
these  changes  are  reflected  in  His  acts.  The  miracle  at 
Cana  is  concerned  with  the  elements,  as  it  were,  of  the 
world;  but  the  miracle  at  Bethany  with  the  most  awful 
mysteries  of  life,  the  saddest  and  most  sacred  secrets  of 
the  spirit.  While  at  first  He  is  only  one  who  can  "  heal 
the  sick  of  divers  diseases,"  later  He  is  one  whom  **  even 
the  wind  and  sea  obey."  ^  While  His  first  hearers  were 
not  so  much  astonished  at  Himself  as  at  His  doctrine, 
He  appeared  later  to  the  men  who  knew  Him  best 
as  one  "transfigured,  and  His  face  did  shine  as  the 
sun,  and  His  raiment  was  white  as  the  light."  ^  The 
power  He  possessed  seemed  to  grow  by  exercise  ; 
His  last  was  His  greatest  miracle,  His  greatest  words 
were  His  last.  No  sayings  so  divinely  become  Christ 
as  the  sayings  on  the  cross  ;  no  act  so  finely  illus- 
trates His  mind  and  mission  as  the  raising  of  Lazarus. 
Action  and  speech  were  in  lovely  and  significant  harmony. 
He  went  to  death  from  a  victory  over  the  grave.  His 
right  to  lay  down  His  life  was  proved  by  His  power  to 
raise  from  the  dead  ;  the  prayer  for  the  men  that  crucified 
Him  is  explained  by  the  quickening  word  that  had  changed 
death  into  life.  And  so  in  Christ  doctrine  and  deed  con- 
firm each  other ;  if  by  the  one  He  predicted  the  death, 
by  the  other  He  explained  the  resurrection  that  was  to 
be  accomplished  at  Jerusalem. 

These  qualities  of  the  Evangelical  narratives  as  records 
of  so-called  miraculous  events — so  finely  natural  and  im- 
miraculous  in  tone,  so  finely  consistent  and  harmonious, 
almost  without  consciousness  or  design,  in  their  concep- 
tion and  literary  presentation  of  Christ — suggest  a  line  of 
thought  supplementary  to  one  we  have  already  pursued.^ 

'  Mark  i.  24 ;  iv.  41.  «  Luke  iv.  32  ;  Matt.  vii.  28  ;  xvii.  2. 

S  Siip'a,  149,  ff. 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES.  201 

The  miracles  were  then  discussed  in  their  relation  to 
the  person  of  Christ ;  now  they  are  to  be  discussed  in 
relation  to  the  Evangelical  history.  The  former  dis- 
cussion rose  out  of  the  earlier  miracles,  the'  first  mani- 
festations of  the  supernatural  in  Christ ;  the  present  is 
directly  concerned  with  the  later  miracles,  the  most  extra- 
ordinary and  least  credible  in  nature.  Yet  these  are  the 
very  events  that  the  Evangelists  relate  so  simply  that  it 
seems  as  if  they  thought  nothing  could  be  more  natural 
than  their  occurrence,  yet  so  subtly,  that  they  are  har- 
moniously woven  into  the  very  texture  of  the  narrative, 
and  essentially  incorporated  with  its  substance.  And  the 
qualities  are  indissolubly  associated.  It  is  because  they 
conceive  miracles  as  so  natural  to  Christ,  that  they  pre- 
sent them  with  an  art  so  simple  yet  so  perfect,  so  uncon- 
scious yet  so  complete. 

Now  it  will  best  accord  with  our  design  not  to  allow 
the  discussion  to  range  over  the  whole  field,  and  so  it  had 
better  be  confined  to  the  very  definite  issues  raised  by  a 
single  typical  case.  The  most  typical  case,  fullest  at  once 
of  critical  difficulties  and  of  the  comfort  that  comes  of  the 
highest  Christian  truth,  is  the  raising  of  Lazarus.  It  is 
the  greatest  of  Christ's  miracles  :  to  know  this  is  to  know 
all.  There  is  none  harder  to  believe  ;  none  that,  believed, 
is  so  rich  in  meaning,  so  glorious  in  its  assurance  to  faith 
and  in  its  promise  to  hope.  The  truths  embedded  in  it, 
and  embalmed  by  it,  are  many  and  cardinal.  It  expresses 
with  wonderful  force  the  tender  grace,  the  holy  human 
sympathy,  of  Christ.  His  love  for  man  is  made  eminently 
intense  and  personal  by  His  love  for  Martha  and  Mary  and 
Lazarus.  His  place  in  the  home  is  made  inmost  and 
secure  by  faith  in  the  gentle  Presence  that  dwelt  with  the 
sisters  of  Bethany,  a  Presence  that  seems  to  consecrate 
the  family,  and  make  it  the  seat  and  sanctuary  of  Divine 
influences.     When,  too,  the  soul  sits  dumb  and  desolate 

14 


202  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

in  **  the  shadow  feared  of  man,"  peace  and  comfort  come 
from  the  voice  of  Him  who  once  spoke  a  dead  friend  into 
life ;  or  when  sorrow  has  come  to  the  spirit  hke  a  hot 
wind,  which  dries  its  moisture  and  burns  up  its  fruits  and 
flowers,  banishing  at  once  the  rain  of  heaven  and  the  dew 
of  earth,  then  those  tears  Divine  Manhood  once  wept  at 
the  grave  of  the  man  He  loved  fall  on  the  arid  soil,  and 
moisten  it  into  soft  humanity  again.  Then,  too,  Christian 
hope  might  wither  and  die,  were  it  not  for  the  words  that, 
while  they  might  as  words  of  a  friend  cheer  the  sisters, 
nothing  less  than  a  miracle  could  verify  or  transmute  into 
words  of  truth  for  the  world.  We  love  our  dead  ;  we  love 
even  their  very  dust.  We  love  the  memories  that  endear 
the  past  and  the  hopes  that  gladden  the  future ;  making 
us,  in  the  very  moment  when  the  longing  born  of  love  is 
mightiest,  feel  "  the  touch  of  the  vanished  hand,"  and  hear 
"  the  sound  of  the  voice  that  is  still."  And  the  faith  which 
created  these  hopes  owes  in  a  large  measure  its  being 
to  the  words  spoken  and  the  deed  done  at  the  grave  of 
Lazarus.  The  words,  **  I  am  the  resurrection  and  the 
life,"  have  created  the  angel  of  hope  that  watches  the 
sleep  of  the  Christian  dead,  and  makes  it  to  the  living 
radiant  with  peace  and  immortality.  Were  they  to  cease 
to  be  Christ's,  should  we  not  feel  as  if  a  stream  of  dismal 
paganism  had  been  turned  against  our  sun,  and  clothed  it 
in  clouds  ?  And  if  they  stand  alore,  they  as  good  as  cease 
to  be  His  ;  the  words  without  the  miracle  become  but  an 
impertinent  or  idle  vaunt,  a  promise  that  all  nature  and  all 
history  have  combined  to  deny  and  disappoint.  Only  lips 
that  could  speak  creative  words  could  say  with  truth, 
*'  Whosoever  liveth  and  believeth  in  me  shall  never  die." 

But  the  very  eminence  of  its  spiritual  significance 
makes  the  difficulties  that  beset  it  graver  and  weightier. 
What  is  finely  reasonable  as  a  symbolical  narrative  be- 
comes, when  studied  as  a  sober  historical  record,  amazing 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES.  203 

and  incredible.  A  miracle  of  healing  is  comparatively 
explicable  ;  it  may  result  from  the  subtle  co-operation  of 
two  imaginations  and  two  wills  :  but  a  miracle  like  this  is 
an  act  of  creation,  an  event  not  only  outside  all  experience, 
but  contrary  to  it.  Then,  too,  the  evidence  for  it  seems 
slender,  altogether  inadequate.  It  is  peculiar  to  the  Fourth 
Gospel ;  the  Synoptists  know  nothing  of  it.  On  the  sup- 
position that  it  occurred,  their  silence  seems  inexplicable. 
It  is  exactly  the  sort  of  event  they  would  have  loved  to  de- 
scribe :  it  exalts  Christ  and  degrades  His  enemies ;  it  is 
the  victorious  proof  of  His  claims  and  their  infamy.  It  is 
most  remarkable  that  three  men,  the  nearest,  too,  to  the 
time  and  place,  should  omit  all  mention  of  what  is  certainly 
Christ's  most  extraordinary  achievement,  whilst  a  fourth 
and  more  distant  historian  describes  it  in  so  full  and  real- 
istic detail.  When  the  matter  is  so  stated,  it  does  seem 
as  if  the  difficulties  must  vanquish  belief,  and  reasonable 
faith  be  pronounced  impossible. 

But  now  let  us  look  at  the  matter  from  the  side  of  the 
Evangelical  history,  especially  with  the  view  of  discovering 
how  it  is  affected  by  the  denial  of  the  miracle,  whether  it 
become  more  or  less  consistent  and  comprehensible,  more 
or  less  coherent  and  credible.  Let  us  see,  then,  how  any 
of  the  several  forms  of  denial  compatible  with  historical 
criticism  would  affect  the  narrative  that  more  directly 
concerns  us. 

There  is  the  theory  favoured  by  the  older  Rationalism, 
that  the  fancied  miracle  was  due  to  a  series  of  happy 
accidents  and  coincidences ;  that  the  death  had  been 
apparent,  not  real ;  that  the  cool  atmosphere  of  the  tomb 
and  the  piercing  accents  of  a  loved  voice  had  combined  to 
awake  Lazarus  from  his  death-like  sleep  ;  that  the  agitation 
of  Jesus  was  due  to  the  appearance  of  the  revived  corpse, 
but,  presence  of  mind  overmastering  fear,  the  summons, 
"  Lazarus,  come  forth  !  "  had  as  its  result  the  emergence 


204  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

of  the  supposed  dead  man.  This  interpretation  was  in 
tended,  while  denying  the  reality  of  the  miracle,  to  pre- 
serve the  historical  truth  of  the  narrative.  But  how  did 
it  succeed  ?  The  miracle  is  introduced  by  a  history,  which 
must  be  negatived  if  the  natural  explanation  is  to  stand. 
Jesus  said,  "  Our  friend  Lazarus  is  fallen  asleep,  but  I  go 
that  I  may  awake  him  out  of  his  sleep."  ^  And  this  clear 
pre-intimation  of  purpose  and  prophecy  of  the  event  are  at 
once  emphasized  by  the  words,  "Lazarus  is  dead;  and  I 
am  glad  for  your  sakes  that  I  was  not  there,  to  the  intent 
ye  may  believe."  *  Then  the  words  of  Jesus  to  Martha 
are  significant,  "Thy  brother  shall  rise  again, "^  especially 
in  the  light  of  His  answer  at  the  grave  to  her  remonstrance 
about  the  removal  of  the  stone,  "  Saidst  I  not  unto  thee, 
that,  if  thou  wouldest  believe,  thou  shouldest  see  the  glory 
of  God  ?  "  *  These  sayings  were  immovable  stones  of 
stumbling  to  the  theory  that  maintained  the  reality  of  the 
event,  but  denied  the  truth  of  the  miracle,  for  the  accident 
of  the  end  could  not  explain  the  expressed  design  of  the 
beginning.  The  historical  truth  of  both  was  impossible. 
If  the  event  was  accidental,  the  sayings  must  be  false ;  if 
the  sayings  were  true,  the  event  could  not  be  accidental. 
But  the  theory,  granting  as  probable  all  its  violent  improb- 
abilities, was  even  in  more  radical  contradiction  to  the 
narrative.  It  failed  to  explain  the  conduct  of  Jesus.  Why 
did  He  go  to  the  grave  ?  Why  did  He  desire  to  see  the 
buried  Lazarus  ?  A  dead  body  was  a  hateful  thing  to  the 
Jew ;  to  touch  it  was  to  be  defiled.  If  Jesus  was  above 
the  prejudices  of  His  own  countrymen.  He  must  still  more 
have  been  above  the  morbid  curiosity  of  ours.  It  would 
be  hard  to  imagine  anything  more  un-Christ-like  than  the 
desire  to  see  the  wasted  dead,  or  to  look  into  an  offensive 
"  charnel  cave."     The  criticism  that  must  assume  such  a 

I  John  xi.  II.  3  Ibid.  xi.  23. 

*  Ibid.  xi.  14,  15.  4  Ibid.  xi.  40. 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES.  205 

desire  stands  convicted  of  incapacity  to  understand  the 
Person  it  would  reach  and  pourtray. 

Has  the  mythical  theory,  then,  which  was  more  merci- 
less to  Rationalism  than  even  to  orthodoxy^  been  more 
successful  ?  Strauss  explained  this  and  the  similar  Evan- 
gelical miracles  as  due  to  the  early  Christian  imagination, 
unconsciously  creative,  clothing  Jesus  in  the  supernatural 
attributes  and  actions  of  Elijah  and  Elisha,  the  most 
wonderful  of  the  Old  Testament  prophets/  With  the 
philosophical  bases  and  critical  assumptions  of  the  mythical 
hypothesis  we  have  here  no  concern,  but  only  with  the 
question  whether  the  explanation  it  offered  be  compatible 
with  this  narrative  in  particular  or  the  Evangelical  history 
in  general.  The  first  thing  that  strikes  us,  as  affecting 
both  points,  is — it  does  seem  strange  that  the  finest  crea- 
tion of  the  mythical  imagination,  working  under  condi- 
tions essentially  Jewish,  and  with  materials  derived  from 
the  Old  Testament,  should  be  found  in  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
It  is  marked  throughout  by  almost  fierce  Judaic  antipathies, 
and  its  want  of  a  Hebrew  atmosphere  and  colouring  has 
been  held  one  of  its  most  distinctive  characteristics.  But 
the  purest  and  most  original  w^ork  of  Hellenistic  specula- 
tion does  not  seem  the  proper  soil  for  the  purest  and  most 
original  product  of  the  Judaeo-Christian  phantasy.  The 
one  position  is  the  negation  of  the  other.  The  theory 
would  have  required  our  narrative  to  appear  in  Matthew, 
and  can  only  regard  it  as  misplaced  in  John,  without 
being  able  to  give  any  reason  why  it  has  been  so  misplaced. 
Then  the  narrative  is  wonderfully  sober,  vivid,  and  truthful 
in  feature  and  detail — far  too  much  so  to  be  the  work  of 
an  unconsciously  creative  imagination,  which,  being  essen- 
tially exaggerative,  never  sees  its  objects  as  they  stand 
revealed  by  the  clear  light  of  nature  to  a  clear  and  search- 
ing eye.  If  the  central  event  is  mythical,  the  incidents 
'  Leben  jfesu,  §  100. 


2o6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

that  surround  it  must  show  the  action,  the  tool-marks,  as 
it  were,  of  the  mythical  faculty.  But  do  they  ?  The 
topographical  accuracy  is  remarkable,^  and  still  more  so 
the  minute  and  delicate  way  in  which  peculiarities  of  cha- 
racter are  indicated,^  the  circumstantial  and  careful  atten- 
tion to  unimportant  yet  most  significant  details  relative  to 
the  persons,  their  relations,  their  history,  their  feelings, 
hopes,  and  actions,  as  influenced  now  by  custom  and  now 
by  personal  reasons,  sorrow,  concern,  or  love.^  This  is  not 
the  way  in  which  the  mythical  imagination  goes  to  work  : 
its  creations  are  on  a  large  scale,  thrown  off  with  a  fine 
contempt  for  those  delicacies  of  light  and  shade  that  in 
real  life  so  subtly  cross  and  blend.  And  when  we  analyze 
the  narrative,  we  find  it  too  full  of  tender  and  moving 
humanity  to  be  a  creation  of  the  idea.  "  Now  Jesus 
loved  Martha,  and  her  sister,  and  Lazarus."'^  The  drop- 
ping out  of  Mary's  name  is  a  most  significant  touch,  as 
if  the  stronger  had  absorbed  the  softer  sister,  or  been  to 
her  a  sort  of  mother  or  head.  Then,  their  love  to  Christ 
is  finely  indicated  in  the  message,^  which  expresses  a  trust 
that  knows  no  hesitancy  or  fear.  The  conversation,  too, 
of  Jesus  and  His  disciples  is  finely  in  keeping  with  their 
respective  characters :  they  afraid  to  go  into  Judaea,  He 
afraid  only  of  the  darkness,  resolved  to  walk  in  the  light, 
even  though  it  should  lead  straight  down  into  the  valley 
of  death.^ 

But  the  most  perfect  scene  is  the  successive  interviews 
with  the  sisters.  Each  is  true  to  her  character  as  we 
know  it  from  Luke.^  Martha — strong,  self-possessed,  not 
so  absorbed  in  grief  or  in  the  formal  comforts  custom 
offered  as  to  be  blind  or  indifferent  to  what  was  going  on 

'Johnxi.  i8.  4  John  xi.  5. 

2  Ibid.  xi.  16,  20,  28,  29,  32.     Cf.  21,  39.  5  Ibid.  xi.  3. 

S  Ibid.  xi.  I,  2,  5,  8,  19,  28-31,  2)3,  38.  *  Ibid.  xi.  8- 10. 
7  Luke  x.  38-42. 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES.  207 

around — is  the  first  to  hear  that  Jesus  has  come;  and, 
with  a  heart  equally  divided  between  love  and  care  for  the 
living  and  sorrow  for  the  dead,  she  goes  out  to  meet  Him. 
Mary,  contemplative,  emotional,  a  genuine  mystic,  so 
filled  with  her  great  sorrow  as  to  be  passive  in  its  hands, 
sits  still  in  the  house.  Martha,  erect,  calm  while  regretful, 
goes  with  quiet  thoughtfulness  softly  out  to  meet  Him. 
Mary,  broken  and  bowed  down,  is  suddenly,  when  she 
hears  Jesus  has  come,  filled  by  a  new  emotion,  and  driven, 
as  it  were,  by  an  irresistible  impulse,  **she  rose  up  hastily, 
and  went  out,"  and  on  reaching  Jesus,  "  fell  down  at  His 
feet."  The  myth-making  faculty  does  not  work  in  this 
delicate,  yet  most  gentle  and  human,  way.  It  is  pos- 
sessed by  the  love  of  the  miraculous,  lives  in  the  region  of 
sensuous  exaggeration,  where  the  finer  qualities  of  the 
spirit  are  lost,  and  only  the  vulgar  marvels  of  the  senses 
live  and  flourish.  Here  we  have  a  true  "  sanctuary  of 
sorrow,"  with  all  its  sorrowful  elements  born  of  man,  all 
its  sacred  and  comforting  influences  born  of  God. 

But  if  the  mythical  theory  was  too  violent  and  improb- 
able, too  little  historical,  too  purely  a  priori,  what  of  the 
theory  that  succeeded  and  superseded  it,  the  theory  which 
the  Tubingen  school,  and  especially  its  most  distinguished 
representatives,  Baur  and  Zeller,  developed  and  applied  to 
our  narrative  ?  ^  Baur  thought  the  narrative  was  an  artis- 
tic rearrangement  of  materials  found  in  the  Synoptists,  espe- 
cially Luke ;  its  motive  being  determined  by  the  dogmatic 
aim  or  purpose  of  the  Gospel.  It  is,  as  it  were,  an  acted 
parable,  designed  to  illustrate  the  words,  '*  I  am  the  re- 
surrection and  the  life."     As  Christ  by  healing  the  blind 

'  Zeller  was  the  first  to  hit  upon  the  ingenious  application  and 
illustration  of  the  tendency  theory  above  described.  Theologische 
Jahrbiicher,  1842,  pp.  89,  ff.  Baur  followed  on  the  same  line  in  the 
celebrated  essay,  Ueber  die  Composition  unci  den  Character  des  J  ohan. 
Evangelitims,  Theol.  Jahrbb.^  1844,  pp.  126-146;  408-41 1.  Also 
his  Kritiscke  (Jniersiu/umgen,  pp.  248,  ff. 


2o8  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

appeared  as  the  Light  of  the  world,  so  by  raising  the  dead 
He  appeared  as  its  Life.  The  narrative  was  but  a  symbol 
or  sensuous  form  for  this  truth.  The  materials  used  were 
borrowed  from  Luke,  the  widow's  son  of  Nain,  the  scene 
between  Martha  and  Mary,  and  the  parable  of  the  Rich 
Man  and  Lazarus,  where  the  wish  was  so  devoutly  ex- 
pressed that  Lazarus  might  be  raised  from  the  dead,  in 
order  to  instruct  the  living.^  There  was,  indeed,  no  point 
that  more  finely  exercised  the  ingenious  critics  of  Ttibingen 
than  this,  showing  how  John  had  so  SKilfuUy  manipulated 
a  parable  of  Luke  as  to  transform  it  into  a  history  illus- 
trative of  the  power  of  faith  against  the  absolute  unbelief 
of  the  Jews.  But  their  endeavours  mainly  proved  their 
own  surpassing  ingenuity.  The  parable  and  the  history 
are  alike  in  this — each  has  a  Lazarus,  and  in  each  he  dies: 
in  every  other  respect  they  are  fundamentally  different.^ 
The  parable  shows  how  the  rewards  and  penalties  of  the 
future  redress  the  wrongs  of  the  present ;  but  the  history 
regards  only  the  present,  and  has  no  eye  for  the  future. 
In  the  parable  the  return  from  death  is  pronounced  impos- 
sible; but  the  history  brings  Lazarus  out  from  the  very 
bosom  of  death.  The  parable  strongly  emphasizes  the 
poverty  of  Lazarus  ;  but  in  the  history  he  lives  in  comfort, 
if  not  in  affluence.  The  moral  of  the  parable  is,  "  They 
will  not  be  persuaded,  though  one  rose  from  the  dead  ;  "  ^ 
but  the  history  says,  "  Many  of  the  Jews  who  had  seen  the 
things  Jesus  did,  believed  on  Him."  ^  The  Tubingen  deri- 
vation of  the  narrative  from  the  parable  was  thus  possible 
only  by  emphasizing  two  superficial  resemblances,  and 
forgetting  many  radical  differences.  If  Baur  declared  that 
the  Lazarus  of  the  history  presupposes  the  parable  of  Laza- 
rus, Hengstenberg  affirmed  that  the  parable  of  Lazarus 
presupposes  the  Lazarus  of  history  ;  and  each  had  about 

'  Luke  vii.  12  ;  x.  38-42  ;  xvi.  19-31.  3  Luke  xvi.  31. 

2  Hase,  GeschichU  Jesu,  p.  513.  4  John  xi.  45. 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES.  209 

equal  authority  for  his  dictum,  uttered  the  conceit  of  a 
vagrant  fancy,  not  the  sober  judgment  of  criticism. 

The  Tubingen  criticism  was,  indeed,  here  as  thoroughly 
unscientific  as  unsound.  It  was  often  curiously  unfaithful 
to  its  own  philosophical  principles — instead  of  regarding 
history  as  the  manifestation  and  explication  of  the  ideal, 
imagining  that  where  the  ideal  began  the  real  or  historical 
ceased  ;  that  where  persons  like  Martha,  Mary,  and 
Lazarus  were  made  to  exhibit  or  illustrate  the  power 
embodied  in  Christ,  they  could  not  really  have  lived.  Yet 
when  we  find  the  sisters  mentioned  in  Luke  reappearing 
in  John,  with  their  respective  characters  so  subtly  and 
perfectly  preserved  in  new  and  most  tragic  relations,  it  is 
a  proof,  not  of  literary  invention  working  with  borrowed 
materials,  but  of  historian  supplementing  historian,  the  two 
halves  of  a  broken  ring  joining  to  form  a  whole.^  Then, 
too,  if  our  narrative  is  to  be  interpreted  as  a  conscious 
literary  creation,  meant  to  typify  Christ,  the  incarnate 
Logos,  as  the  Life  victorious  over  death,  how  are  sayings 
and  acts  that  positively  contradict  this  design  to  be  ex- 
plained ?  ^  He  would  be  but  a  clumsy  artist  who  allowed 
such  incompatible  elements  to  steal  into  his  picture ;  but 
clumsy  fiction  is  no  fiction  :  it  invites  the  detection  and 
exposure  that  are  its  death.  As  nature,  John's  art  is  here 
inimitable ;  as  art  or  invention,  it  is  poor  indeed. 

But  now  we  come  to  another  and  still  more  extraor- 
dinary explanation,  without  doubt  the  most  unworthy  ever 
proposed  by  a  scholar  and  critic  of  reputation.  M.  Renan 
sees  that  an  event  little  less  marvellous  than  a  miracle  is 
needed  to  explain  the  enthusiasm  of  love  and  hate  which 
at  once  glorified  and  embittered  the  death  of  Jesus.  So 
he  conjectures  that  ^  "  something  really  happened  at 
Bethany  which  was  looked  upon  as  a  resurrection.*'     In 

*  Hase,  Geschichte  Jesu,  p.  514.  2  John  xi.  4,  33,  yjy  41. 

3   Vie  ae  Jesus ^  chap,  xxiii. 


2IO  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  heavy  and  impure  atmosphere  of  Jerusalem  the  con- 
science of  Jesus  lost  something  of  its  original  purity,  and 
He  was  no  longer  either  Himself  or  His  own  master.  In 
the  act  which  was  desired  the  family  of  Bethany  were  led 
to  take  part.  "  Faith  knows  no  other  law  than  the 
interest  of  that  which  it  believes  to  be  true."  Obedient 
to  this  comprehensive  principle,  "  Lazarus  caused  himself 
to  be  wrapped  in  bandages  as  if  dead,  and  shut  up  in  the 
tomb  of  his  family;  "  and  when  Jesus  came  and  ordered 
the  stone  to  be  removed,  "  Lazarus  came  forth  in  his 
bandages,  his  head  covered  with  a  winding-sheet."  The 
old  Rationalism  was  sanity  to  the  new  Romanticism.  It 
implies  a  moral  obtuseness  one  may  wonder  at  but  cannot 
reason  with.  Lack  of  insight  into  the  character  of  Jesus 
and  the  motives  that  inspired  the  early  Christian  society 
may  lead  to  strange  results,  but  it  can  hardly  be  either 
cured  or  corrected  by  hostile  argument. 

The  narrative,  then,  does  not  seem  rationally  interpret- 
abie  on  any  theory  that  negatives  the  miracle.  But  it  is 
one  thing  to  say,  These  theories  are  false,  and  quite 
another  thing  to  say,  The  miracle  is  true.  This  is  a  point 
that  does  not  simply  concern  the  interpreter;  it  concerns 
the  historical  critic  as  well.  From,  his  side  we  are  con- 
fronted with  two  questions — one  as  to  the  silence  of  the 
Synoptists,  another  as  to  the  silence  of  the  witnesses  at 
the  trial.  If  a  miracle  so  extraordinary  had  really  been 
performed,  could  the  Synoptists  have  passed  it  over  in 
silence  ?  or  could  the  trial,  a  few  days  later,  of  the  Person 
who  worked  it  have  been  conducted  and  concluded  without 
any  reference  or  allusion  to  what  must  have  overborne  and 
outweighed  all  oral  testimony,  however  adverse  ?  Are 
these  two  points  capable  of  reasonable  explanation  ?  or 
must  they  be  allowed  seriously  to  affect  the  authenticity 
and  credibility  of  the  narrative  ? 

Let  us,  as  the  most  serious  and  significant,  consider  first 


THE  LA  TER  MIR  A  CLES,  2 1 1 

the  silence  of  the  Synoptists.  And  here  it  is  necessary  to 
observe  that  the  silence  is  not  peculiar  to  one  narrative, 
does  not  affect  it  alone,  but  everything  which  John  records 
as  having  been  done  and  spoken  in  and  about  Jerusalem 
prior  to  the  Passion.  The  difficulties  connected  with  the 
silence  must  therefore  be  borne,  not  by  our  history  alone, 
but  by  the  Gospel  as  a  whole  ;  and,  of  course,  the  degree 
in  which  their  pressure  can  be  distributed  over  the  whole 
is  the  measure  of  the  relief  given  to  each  individual  part. 
If  the  silence  had  been  here,  and  nowhere  else,  it  might 
have  been  ominous  ;  but  as  it  is,  within  the  limits  specified, 
general,  it  must  be  explicable  through  the  essential  cha- 
racter of  the  Fourth  in  contrast  to  the  Synoptic  Gospels, 
not  through  the  peculiar  nature  of  our  special  narrative. 
The  Synoptists  are,  in  a  sense,  not  three,  but  one.  They 
have  a  common  source,  and,  it  may  be  said,  common 
materials.  Then,  their  history  is  Galilean  ;  alike  as  to 
scope  and  contents  it  is  defined  by  the  kind  of  ministry 
there  exercised.  When  they  come  to  Jerusalem  it  is  to 
tell  the  story  of  the  Passion ;  and,  for  them,  its  shadow  is 
so  deep  that  it  eclipses  and  conceals  all  besides.  The 
Galilean  history  is  a  unity,  a  circle  which  an  incident  like 
the  miracle  at  Bethany  would  have  broken.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  Luke's  fragmentary  notice  of  Martha  and 
Mary  says  nothing  as  to  their  home,  only  that  Jesus 
"entered  into  a  certain  village."^  The  incident  could 
find  a  place  in  his  history  only  as  unlocalized.  While 
their  silence  is  thus  not  only  explicable,  but,  in  a  sense, 
inevitable,  it  is  significant  that  they  make  Bethany  the 
home  of  Jesus  while  at  Jerusalem,^  and  the  point  whence 
He  starts  on  His  triumphal  entry .^  Certainly  He  must 
have  found  there  kind  hearts  ;  and  there,  too,  the  people 
must  have  found  a  cause  of  wonder  and  enthusiasm. 

'  Luke  X.  38.  2  Matt.  xxi.  17  ;  Mark  xi.  Il,  12. 

3  Ibid.  xi.  i-ii  ;  Luke  xix  29,  flf. 


212  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

But  the  speech  of  the  Fourth  is  as  capable  of  explana- 
tion as  the  silence  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  John  is  as 
much  concerned  with  the  Judaean  as  the  Synoptists  with 
the  Galilean  ministry,  and  for  reasons  that  touch  the 
essential  character  of  His  Gospel.  His  history  is  ideal, 
without  ceasing  to  be  historical.  The  ideal  that  receives 
more  sensuous  expression  in  the  New  Jerusalem  of  the 
Apocalypse,  receives  subtler  expression  in  the  history  that 
is  so  tragically  localized  in  and  round  the  Old  Jerusalem, 
the  city  of  the  Jews,  the  enemies  while  the  descendants  of 
the  ancient  people  of  God.  The  city  He  had  consecrated, 
but  they  depraved,  was  the  appropriate  scene  of  the  last 
fell  conflict  between  their  guilt  and  His  victorious  grace. 
And  John  describes  the  various  acts  in  that  great  drama, 
from  the  first  ominous  word  to  the  tragic  climax.  With- 
out his  Gospel  the  death  of  Christ  would,  even  on  its  simply 
historical  side,  remain  to  us  a  riddle — a  mere  wanton 
and  unprovoked  crime.  With  his  Gospel,  we  can  see  the 
hostile  forces  gathering,  and  mark  their  inevitable  march. 
The  Synoptists  show  us  the  Master  educating  His  disciples, 
founding  His  society,  instituting  His  kingdom ;  but  John 
shows  us  Christ  in  conflict  with  the  Jews — how  He  came 
to  His  own,  but  His  own  refused  to  receive  Him — with 
the  consequent  struggle  between  His  light  and  their  dark- 
ness, culminating  on  their  part  in  the  Cross,  on  His  in 
the  Resurrection. 

And  the  history  is  written  to  exhibit  this  tragic  struggle 
in  its  several  successive  stages.  The  miracles  are  so  pre- 
sented as  at  once  to  define  and  deepen  it,  as  to  show  their 
influence  on  the  progress  of  the  dread  story.  The  earliest 
miracles  excite  a  wonder  that  almost  becomes  faith.'  For 
a  moment  belief  and  unbelief  seem  alike  possible  ;  but  the 
moment  is  of  the  briefest,  only  one  "  man  of  the  Pharisees" 
seeking  Jesus,  the  others  holding  aloof  in  disdainful  neg- 
I  John  ii.  23  ;  iii.  2. 


THE  LATER  MIld^USB^Sl^i^  213 

lect.  The  miracle  at  the  pool  of  Bethesda  shows  the 
neglect  developed  into  hostility ;  the  Jews  "  persecute  '* 
Jesus,  and  "  seek  to  slay  Him."  '  The  cure  of  the  man 
born  blind  deepens  the  exasperation  ;  Healer'and  healed 
are  alike  hated,  and  the  "  disciples  "''of  Moses  ominously 
pronounce  '*  this  man  a  sinner."  ^  The  raising  of  Lazarus 
forms  the  tragic  climax:  what  most  manifests  Christ's 
power  most  provokes  the  Jews'  anger;  the  very  event  that 
best  proves  His  Divine  energy  ripens  their  guilty  purpose.^ 
The  miracle  forces  the  persons  in  the  Divine  drama  to 
declare  themselves,  and  face  each  other  as  absolute  foes — 
so  manifests  the  divinity  in  Christ  as  to  compel  the  Jews 
either  into  submission  or  into  fatal  collision.  The  Nemesis 
that  follows  the  guilty  choice  drives  them  on  the  latter : 
the  Man  is  to  die  really  on  account  of  the  miracle,  or, 
rather,  what  it  signified  as  to  Him  and  threatened  as  to 
them,  but  ostensibly  "  for  the  people  " — i.e,.  His  death  is 
necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  their  religious  ascendancy, 
but  is  to  be  demanded  for  political  reasons.  Our  nar- 
rative is  thus  an  integral^  part  of  the  tragedy  unfolded  in 
the  Fourth  Gospel — is  indeed  at  once  a  culminating  and  a 
turning  point — the  point  where  the  hostility  of  the  past 
culminates,  and  where  the  crime  of  the  Cross  begins.  The 
speech  of  John  was  thus  as  inevitable  as  the  silence  of  the 
Synoptists  is  explicable.  Without  the  miracle  His  history 
had  wanted  its  key;  with  it  their  history  had  wanted  its 
unity — the  unity  it  owed  to  its  moving  within  the  limits  of 
the  Galilean  ministry,  the  geographical  term  denoting  also 
a  distinct  intellectual,  moral,  and  social  sphere. 

Our  discussion  of  the  first  question,  the  silence  of  the 
Synoptists  over  against  the  speech  of  John,  has  brought 
us  to  the  point  from  which  we  can  best  approach  the 
second  question,  the  silence  of  the  witnesses  at  the  trial. 

•  John  V.  16.  '  Ibid,  ix,  16,  24,  28,  29,  34. 

3  Ibid.  xi.  47-53- 


214  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

The  reason  is  obvious ;  John  subtly  makes  Caiaphas  indi- 
cate it.^  Jesus  is  to  be  a  religious  victim  disguised  as  a 
political  offender.  Rome,  tolerant  to  the  religions  of  her 
subject  peoples,  would  not  judge  in  matters  of  faith.^  To 
charge  Jesus  with  aa  offence  against  Moses  had  simply 
been  to  release  Him;  their  one  chance  was  to  convict  Him 
of  a  political  crime.  To  this  point  their  energies  were 
directed ;  so  their  charge  was,  "  We  found  this  person 
perverting  the  nation,  and  forbidding  to  give  tribute  to 
Caesar,  saying  that  He  Himself  is  Christ  the  king."  ^  The 
Synoptists  and  John  are  here  thoroughly  agreed.  The 
priests  and  rulers  translated  the  Hebrew  theocratic  into 
the  Roman  political  idea,  and  urged  the  death  of  Jesus 
because  He  had  claimed  to  be  "the  King  of  the  Jews,'* 
which  they  denied,  confessing  that  they  had  no  king  but 
Caesar.'^  But  John  alone  shows  us  the  framing  of  the 
charge  and  the  reasons  for  it — the  craft  that  made  the 
least  political  of  teachers  a  sacrifice  by  clothing  Him  in 
the  sins  of  the  most  tumultuous  and  rebellious  of  peoples ; 
"  It  is  expedient  for  us  that  one  man  should  die  for  the 
people,  and  that  the  whole  na'tion  perish  not."  But 
this  scheme  required  a  carefully  arranged  trial,  with  well- 
selected  witnesses.  They  must  be  theirs,  not  Christ's — 
speaking  not  to  what  He  was,  but  to  what  He  was  needed 
to  be.  So  there  could  only  be  suppression  of  whatever 
could  make  for  His  Divine  mission  and  character,  and 
bold  suggestion  of  whatever  could  make  out  political  speech 
and  designs. 

But  it  is  not  enough  to  show  that  objections  urged 
against  the  truth  of  our  narrative  turn  into  evidences  and 
claims  on  its  behalf;  we  must  also  show  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  the   subsequent  Evangelical  history.      As  it  grew 

*  John  xi.  49,  50.  ^  Acts  xviii.  15.  3  Lukexxiii.  2. 

4  Matt,  xxvii.  11,  29,  37  ;  Mark  xv.  2,  12,  26;  Luke  xxiii.  38 ;  John 
xviii.  33,  35,  37  ;  xix.  12,  14,  15. 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES.  215 

out  of  what  preceded,  what  succeeds  grows  out  of  it.  This 
is  a  point  which  M.  Renan  has  well  perceived.  He  says, 
**  If  we  reject  this  event  as  imaginary,  all  the  edifice  of  the 
last  week  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  to  which  our  Gospel  gives  so 
much  solidity,  crumbles  at  one  blow."  This  is  all  the 
more  serious  that  the  Fourth  Gospel  from  this  point 
*'  contains  an  amount  of  minute  information  infinitely 
superior  to  that  of  the  Synoptists."  ^  But  the  relation  our 
narrative  bears  to  the  Johannean  history  is  less  significant 
than  its  relation  to  the  Synoptical.  One  side  of  this  rela- 
tion has  bcien  seen — that  touching  the  trial ;  now  we  may 
note  another.  The  triumphal  entry  is  a  very  remarkable, 
and,  as  it  stands  in  the  Synoptists,  an  unexplained  inci- 
dent. The  enthusiasm  of  the  people  seems  to  be  without 
any  real  or  adequate  cause.  The  wonder  that  Jesus  had 
at  first  awakened  had  long  since  died,  and  He  had  been 
living  sadly  with  "  His  own  "  under  the  shadow  of  the 
Cross.  Why  this  sudden  outburst  of  an  admiration  and 
enthusiasm  that  mocked  even  the  joyous  homage  of  His 
early  ministry  ?  Why  did  the  people  in  these  last  dark 
days  do  as  they  had  never  done  in  His  first  bright  ones — 
hail  Him  as  the  Messiah,  the  King  coming  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord  ?  In  seeking  an  answer,  we  must  note  the  point 
from  which  Jesus  approaches  the  city,  Bethany.  In 
Bethany  He  finds  a  home;  His  fame  seems  associated 
with  it.  As  He  comes  from  it  towards  Jerusalem,  the 
multitude  flows  out  to  meet  Him,  breaking,  as  it  sweeps 
round  His  little  band,  into  the  glad  shout,  "  Blessed  be 
the  King  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  :  peace  in 
heaven,  and  glory  in  the  highest !  "^  The  event  that  ex- 
plained the  anger  and  guilty  resolution  of  the  priests  will 
also  explain  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people — will  explain, 
too,  their  sudden  recoil  into  the  fierce  and  pitiless  passion 
which   demanded   the  Cross  and    mocked  the   Crucified, 

*  Vie  de  Jdsusy  p.  5 14.  "  Luke  xix.  38. 


2i6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

Disappointed  enthusiasm  is  dangerously  akin  to  furious 
hate.  The  greater  the  act  that  kindled  the  enthusiasm, 
the  harder  it  is  to  satisfy  its  demands.  The  men  who  had 
been  stirred  to  admiration  by  a  miracle  would  be  certain  to 
crave  miracles,  and  the  cravingungratified  would  leavethem, 
first  suspicious,  then  discontented,  then  angry.  Where 
enthusiasm  was  for  the  power  rather  than  the  person  of 
Christ,  His  behaviour  in  Jerusalem  could  only  disappoint 
and  provoke.  When  the  men  who  had  hailed  Him  as 
Christ  the  King  saw  that  He  did  no  miracle,  but  quietly 
submitted  to  indignities,  capture,  mockery,  they  felt  like 
men  who  had  been  deceived  into  acts  of  undeserved  honour, 
and,  turning  against  Him  revengeful,  they  broke  into  the 
cry,  "  Crucify  Him,  crucify  Him  !  "  Thus  our  miracle 
explains  the  enthusiasm  at  once  of  their  homage  and  their 
hate,  shows  how  the  people  that  welcomed  Him  into  the 
city  could  also  be  the  people  that  followed  Him  along  the 
way  of  sorrow  with  the  scornful  cry,  '*  He  saved  others ; 
Himself  He  cannot  save." 

Into  the  rich  and  most  varied  spiritual  meanings  of  our 
narrative  it  is  not  possible  to  enter.  It  is  a  Divine 
allegory,  full  of  the  most  sublime  and  consolatory  truths ; 
and  to  attempt  to  unfold  these  would  be  to  attempt  to 
reach  the  deepest  treasures  of  our  faith.  Two  living  poets 
have,  each  in  his  own  way,  used  this  narrative.  Tennyson 
seizes  its  influence  on  Mary,  and  imagines  the  sister 
satisfied  in  the  possession  of  her  brother,  and  restful  in 
the  presence  of  Christ. 

Her  eyes  are  homes  of  silent  prayer. 
Nor  other  thought  her  mind  admits, 
But  he  was  dead,  and  there  he  sits, 

And  He  that  brought  him  back  is  there. 

Then  one  deep  love  doth  supersede 
All  other,  when  her  ardent  gaze 
Roves  from  the  living  brother's  face, 

And  rests  upon  the  Life  indeed. 


THE  LATER  MIRACLES,  217 

All  subtle  thought,  all  curious  fears, 
Borne  down  by  gladness  so  complete, 
She  bows,  she  bathes  the  Saviour's  feet 

With  costly  spikenard  and  with  tears.   ^ 

Browning,  stronger,  more  masterful,  has,  with  rare 
imaginative  insight,  gone  to  the  heart  of  the  matter,  and 
presented  us  with  a  picture  of  Lazarus  as  he  may  have 
lived  and  must  have  spoken.  Karshish,  the  Arab  physi- 
cian, meets  him,  and  feels — 

The  man  had  something  in  the  look  of  him — 

awed,  convinced,  credulous  in  the  presence  of  his  story, 
unable  to  disbelieve  it,  yet  ashamed  of  his  belief.  Brown- 
ing has  nothing  finer  than  the  analysis  of  Karshish  as  he 
tells  the  story  he  has  heard  from  Lazarus. 

This  man  so  cured  regards  the  Curer,  then, 

As — God  forgive  me  ! — who  but  God  Himself, 

Creator  and  Sustainer  of  the  world, 

That  came  and  dwelt  in  flesh  on  it  awhile  ! 

— Sayeth  that  such  an  one  was  born  and  lived, 

Taught,  heal'd  the  sick,  broke  bread  at  his  own  house. 

Then  died,  with  Lazarus  by,  for  aught  I  know, 

And  yet  was  .  .  .  what  I  said,  nor  choose  repeat. 

And  must  have  so  avouch'd  Himself,  in  fact. 

In  hearing  of  this  very  Lazarus, 

Who  saith — but  why  all  this  of  what  he  saith? 

Why  write  of  trivial  matters,  things  of  price 

Calling  at  every  moment  for  remark  ? 

I  noticed  on  the  margin  of  a  pool 

Blue  flowering  borage,  the  Aleppo  sort 

Aboundeth,  very  nitrous  !     It  is  strange  ! 

Yet  the  tale  fascinates  him  ;  its  wonderful  truth  has  filled 
his  imagination,  and  melts  him  into  admiration  and  awe. 

The  very  God  !  Think,  Abib  :  dost  thou  think  ? 
So,  the  All-Great  were  the  All-loving  too — 
So,  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice 

Saying,  "  O  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here  ! 
Face,  my  hands  fashion'd,  see  it  in  myself  1 

15 


2i8  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

Thou  hast  no  power,  nor  may'st  conceive  of  mine, 

But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love, 

And  thou  must  love  me  who  hast  died  for  thee.** 

And  there,  for  Lazarus  and  for  all  ages,  lies  the  inmost 
truth  of  the  miracle. 


XIII. 

JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM. 

The  mission  to  Bethany  had  been  one  of  danger  and  of 

mercy:  of  danger  to  Jesus,  of  mercy  to  the  sisters  who 

had   loved   and   lost.     In   their   home   sorrow   had  been 

turned  into  joy ;  their  brother  lived  and  their  Friend  was 

present. 

From  every  house  the  neighbours  met, 

The  streets  were  fiU'd  with  joyful  sound, 

A  solemn  gladness  even  crown'd 
The  purple  brows  of  Olivet. 

But  over  in  Jerusalem  another  spirit  reigned.  Into  the 
city  the  strange  news  had  been  carried.  Through  the 
bazaars  and  the  market-place,  from  gate  to  gate,  and 
home  to  home,  into  the  temple  and  the  schools  the 
whisper  ran,  "  Behold,  a  man  raised  up  by  Christ !  "  The 
common  people  heard  it  gladly,  and  said,  *'  Lo,  a  sign 
from  heaven  ;  the  Son  of  David  has  come  ;  He  will  break 
the  yoke  of  the  oppressor,  and  we  shall  be  free.'*  Tumult 
was  in  the  air,  and  the  priests  knew  it;  a  great  spiritual 
act  by  a  great  spiritual  Person  had  blown  the  slumbering 
political  desires  of  the  multitude  into  flame,  and  the 
scribes  felt  the  glowing  heat  underfoot.  The  Pharisees 
were  anti-Roman,  loved  to  foster  in  Israel  dislike  of  the 
alien  and  devotion  to  the  hopes  and  ideals  proper  to  the 
people  of  God  ;  but  they  could  only  fear  and  oppose  a 
movement  that  might  end  in  saluting  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
as  the  Christ.     The  Sadducees  were  tolerant   to  Rome, 


220  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

knew,  feared,  obeyed  her,  and  dreaded  nothing  so  much 
as  the  revolt  that  might  rouse  her  unpitying  wrath.  So 
the  ancient  rivals,  united  by  common  hate  for  hateful 
ends,  met  to  plot.  No  man  comprehended  the  situation 
better  than  Caiaphas,  high-priest  that  fateful  year;  and 
he,  cynically,  though  diplomatically  enough,  formulated 
the  need  of  the  hour — "  It  is  expedient  that  one  man  die 
for  the  people,  and  that  the  whole  nation  perish  not."  ' 
What  he  meant  was  this  :  "  We  are  on  the  eve  of  disaster; 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  people  for  this  Galilean  will  carry 
them  into  revolt,  unless  we  strike  it  through  the  heart  by 
bringing  Him  to  death."  The  Sanhedrin  understood  the 
priest,  complimented  his  astuteness  by  adopting  his  policy 
and  working  out  his  scheme.  They  did  not  mean  to  be 
bad,  only  patriotic,  and  so  obedient  to  the  maxim,  "  Salus 
populi  suprema  est  lex."  It  was  in  this  heroic  spirit  that 
the  ancient  enemies,  who  so  cordially  despised  each  other, 
made  their  covenant,  and  as  new  but  dear  friends  assumed 
their  parts  in  what  was  to  be  a  drama  at  once  more  in- 
famous and  more  glorious  than  they  knew.  Their  parts, 
indeed,  were  to  be  different,  the  priests  the  more  active, 
the  Pharisees  the  more  passive,  the  evolution  into  practice 
of  the  priestly  policy  being  not  at  all  tc  the  Pharisaic 
mind,  the  thing  done  in  fear  of  Rome  being  done  by  the 
help  and  arm  of  Rome.  And  had  they  been  able  to  foresee 
the  result,  they  would  have  disHked  the  policy  the  more. 
Their  expedient  was  both  to  succeed  and  fail.  The  one 
man  was  to  die  for  the  people,  but  the  nation  was  to 
perish.  The  eternal  righteousness  that  restrains  the  wrath 
of  man,  and  even  forces  it  to  praise  Him,  was  to  turn 
their  selfish  expedient  into  a  Divine  Sacrifice,  which, 
while  it  saved  man,  was  only  to  help  the  more  surely  to 
throw  their  proud  city  under  the  iron  heel  and  devouring 
torch  of  Rome.  So  in  the  wisdom  of  God  does  a  soul  of 
»  John  xi.  49,  50. 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM.  221 

good  issue  from  things  evil  to  do  the  will  alike  of   His 
mercy  and  justice. 

But  Christ  knew  that,  though  His  hour  was  at  hand,  it 
was  not  yet  come.  The  Prophet  was  not  to  perish  out  of 
Jerusalem,  or  in  it,  save  at  His  own  time.  So  He  with- 
drew '*  into  a  country  near  to  the  wilderness,  into  a  city 
called  Ephraim," '  and  there  waited  the  coming  of  the 
feast  that  was  to  mark  the  moment  of  His  sacrifice. 
When  the  roads  were  thronged  with  pilgrims  from  Greece 
and  Egypt,  from  Italy  and  Gaul,  from  Spain  and  Syria. 
He,  too,  turned  His  face  to  the  holy  city,  and  began  His 
great  march  to  brief  bitter  death  and  eternal  glorious 
power.  For  the  time  He  had  become  an  enigma  to  His 
disciples.  They  could  not  understand  His  sorrow,  es- 
pecially as  they  were  still  living  in  the  sunshine  of  His 
greatest  miracle.  In  His  supreme  moments  society  was 
impossible  to  Christ.  He  lived  in  an  atmosphere  where 
human  sympathy  had  to  sleep  or  die,  and  the  human 
voice  to  speak  unheard.  The  grief  of  God  is  too  deep  for 
the  thought  of  man.  He  who  embodied  the  first  could 
only  be  a  riddle  to  the  second.  Life  by  death,  salvation 
by  sacrifice,  were  truths  lying  outside  the  horizon  of  the 
spirits  then  around  Christ.  The  feeling  that  made  Peter 
rebuke  Jesus  at  the  first  mention  of  His  sufferings  was 
common,  was,  too,  finely  natural.  2  Why  should  He 
speak  of  suffering  and  death  ?  What  need  had  He  who 
had  raised  Lazarus  to  die  ?  So  His  words  seemed  mys- 
terious, enigmatical,  created  shadows  of  the  mind  all  the 
deeper  because  of  the  recent  sunshine.  Like  men  puzzled, 
they  became  bewildered,  dubious,  suspicious,  feeling  as 
if  they  were  threatened  by  evils  they  had  no  right  to 
anticipate.  Mark,  after  his  manner,  gives  us  a  glance 
of  real  and  living  insight  into  the  sacred  circle  just  at  the 
moment  the  pilgrimage  of  sorrow  began  :  "  And  they  were 
»  John  xi.  54.  «  Matt.  xvi.  22. 


222  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

in  the  way  going  up  to  Jerusalem  ;  and  Jesus  went  before 
them :  and  they  were  amazed  ;  and  as  they  followed,  they 
were  afraid."  ^  With  their  expectations  unfulfilled,  with- 
out the  experience  that  could  act  as  interpreter  or  guide, 
perplexed  by  hearing  prophecy  contradict  miracle,  and 
seeing  miracle  contradict  prophecy,  they  grew  bewildered, 
astonished,  doubtful,  fell  out  of  fellowship  with  their 
Master,  and  left  Him  to  begin  His  high  and  glorious  way 
alone.  The  shadow  that  rested  on  His  Spirit  so  awed 
and  "amazed"  theirs  that  they  could  not  walk  by  His 
side,  or  listen  with  quick,  interpretive  sympathy  to  His 
speech,  could  only  follow  after,  full  of  uneasy  fears,  with 
thoughts  they  could  speak  to  each  other,  but  not  to  Him. 
Yet  though  they  were  reluctant  learners,  the  suffering 
that  was  to  make  Him  perfect  was  teaching  them.  He 
could  not  leave  them  in  the  pleasant  illusions  their  fancies 
had  woven  out  of  their  own  desires  and  His  great  deeds. 
To  do  so  had  been  worse  cruelty,  had  made  the  awakening 
an  awakening  to  sorrow  that  could  never  have  blossomed 
into  joy.  And  so  He  turns  ever  to  them  with  His  un- 
welcome speech  of  suffering,  death,  and  resurrection,* 
leaving  time  to  be  His  interpreter.  The  process  was 
painful,  but  from  it  almost  all  were  to  come  forth  purified  ; 
one  alone  was  to  issue  dark  in  soul,  angry  in  spirit, 
prepared  for  worst  and  darkest  deeds,  yet  with  goodness 
enough  in  Him  to  be  remorseful,  and  pass  hence  to  His 
own  place,  not  a  seared  and  conscienceless  ruffian,  but  an 
anguished  and  self-despising  man,  who  had  by  fell  ex- 
periment made  the  dreadful  discovery  that  to  no  man  is 
evil  so  bad  as  to  the  evil-doer. 

The  miracle  at  Bethany  was  thus  a  centre  whence  had 
issued  the  most  conflicting  influences;  and  we  must 
watch  their  operation  in  the  various  circles,  friendly,  in- 
different, inimical,  that  surround  Jesus.     Within  His  own 

■  Mark  x.  32.  '  Ibid.  x.  32-34. 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM,  223 

society  it  created  the  high  hopes  that  listened  amazed,  in- 
credulous to  His  prophetic  words.  The  disciples  found 
it  more  agreeable  to  believe  the  eye  than  the  ear :  on  the 
act  they  could  place  their  own  interpretation,'which  was 
so  much  happier  than  any  meaning  they  could  get  out  of 
His  speech.  The  miracle  was  a  prophecy  in  act,  signify- 
ing that  the  hour  of  His  power  was  at  hand.  In  its  light 
certain  former  words  of  His  were  re-read  and  made  by 
their  quickened  imaginations  to  speak  the  thing  they 
wished.  The  Palinger.esia,^  in  their  sense,  was  as  good 
as  here ;  the  twelve  thrones  as  good  as  set,  and  they 
seated  judging  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel.  How  heedless 
the  new  ambitions  were  of  the  new  prophecies  an  event 
significantly  shows.  He  had  hardly  ceased  speaking  of 
the  betrayal  and  death,  when  Salome,  with  her  sons,  came 
to  Him,  saying,  "  Grant  that  these  my  two  sons  may  sit, 
the  one  on  Thy  right  hand,  the  other  on  Thy  left,  in  Thy 
kingdom."^  The  nearest  to  Him  were  yet  far  from  Him  ; 
even  love  was  too  blind  to  divine  the  truth ;  and  so  in  His 
answer  there  seems  to  live  the  infinite  sadness  of  a  spirit 
not  understood,  where  understanding  is  life  :  '*  Ye  know 
not  what  ye  ask.  Are  ye  able  to  drink  of  the  cup  that  I 
shall  drink  of,  and  to  be  baptized  with  the  baptism  that  I 
am  baptized  with  ?  "  Their  answer  is  a  tragic  revelation 
of  ignorance,  and  the  vain  courage  that  is  born  of  it :  "  We 
are  able."  They  did  not  dream  of  Gethsemane  and  the 
cross,  but  of  the  chalice  of  victory,  the  baptism  that  con- 
secrated the  throne  and  purified  for  judgment.  For  these 
they  were  "  able  " — qualified  for  the  highest  seats,  offices, 
acts  in  the  kingdom.  Men  who  think  themselves  equal 
to  rule  are  often  found  unequal  to  obedience  ;  and  so  this 
conscious  ability  for  the  throne  was  soon  to  be  proved 
inability  to  serve  in  suffering  and  obey  in  sacrifice.  They 
did  not  know  that  men  must  suffer  with  Christ  before  they 
»  Matt.  xix.  28-30.  2  Ibid,  XX.  21. 


2  24  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

rould  reign  with  Him ;  and,  in  their  ignorance,  they 
wished  to  reign  before  they  had  been  perfected.  And  the 
truth  He  stated  :  they  were  to  drink  of  His  cup,  and  be 
baptized  with  His  baptism  ;  His  agony  and  cross  were  to 
be  theirs ;  in  Him  and  with  Him  they  were  to  suffer. 
Fellowship  with  Him  in  life  involved  fellowship  with  Him 
in  death,  and  as  the  joy  of  the  first  had  been,  the  sorrow 
of  the  second  would  be.  But  the  seat  on  His  right  hand 
or  His  left  was  not  an  absolute  or  arbitrary,  but  a  con- 
ditional, gift;  it  was  reserved  for  those  "for  whom  it  is 
prepared  of  my  Father."  The  reward  was  to  the 
worthiest ;  proximity  was  to  depend  on  affinity.  His 
must  suffer  with  Him,  if  they  were  to  **  be  glorified  to- 
gether." ^  But  His  words  were  as  yet  a  parable  whose 
meaning  they  could  not  read  ;  the  cross,  with  the  mingled 
agonies  and  joys  that  followed  it,  was  needed  to  teach 
them.  The  brothers,  puzzled,  turned  to  face  the  dis- 
ciples ;  the  disciples,  angry,  turned  to  rebuke  the  brothers  ; 
all  confused,  bewildered  to  listen  to  the  words,  "Whoso- 
ever will  be  chief  among  you,  let  him  be  your  servant; 
even  as  the  Son  of  man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto, 
but  to  minister,  and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  the 
many."^  A  generation  later,  one  of  the  men  who  stood 
there  as  in  a  dream,  with  a  deed  of  highest  power 
in  his  memory,  visions  of  judicial  glory  in  his  imagi- 
nation, words  of  sorrow  and  death  in  his  ears,  was  to 
be  a  prisoner  in  Patmos  "for  the  Word  of  God,  and  for 
the  testimony  of  Jesus  Christ."  ^  There,  with  the  blue 
iEgean  all  round  him,  he  was  still  to  feel  as  in  the 
presence  of  the  Son  of  man,  hearing  Him  speak  with  a 
voice  like  the  sound  of  the  multitudinous  waves  ever 
breaking  in  music  on  the  beach.  There,  too,  he  was  to 
dream  of  "  dominion  and  glory,"  of  a  heaven  that  ruled 
earth,  and  a  Christ  that  made  men  "kings  and  priests 
»  Rom.  viii.  17.  '"■  Matt.  xx.  27,  28.  3  Rev.  i.  9. 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM,  225 

unto  God  and  His  Father."  ^  But  there  he  had  no  vain 
vision  of  a  throne  to  him  who  had  first  claimed  it.  His 
visions  were  now  of  "  a  multitude  no  man  could  number" 
*'  before  the  throne  and  before  the  Lamb."  And  he  does 
not  ask,  as  of  old,  for  a  place,  but  simply  rejoices  to  hear, 
"These  are  they  which  came  out  of  great  tribulation, 
and  have  washed  their  robes  and  made  them  white  in  the 
blood  of  the  Lamb."  *  He  knows  now  what  he  knew  not 
then  :  to  drink  Christ's  cup  and  to  share  His  baptism  is 
to  live  and  reign  with  Him. 

So  Jesus  begins  to  go  up  to  Jerusalem  with  the  vision 
of  the  cross  standing  out  clear  before  His  own  soul,  while 
the  disciples  dream  of  His  kingship  and  their  own  coming 
authority.  The  pilgrimage  that  was  now  beginning  was 
to  be  His  last — a  strange  contrast  to  His  first.  Then  He 
was  a  boy,  full  of  great  wonder,  of  large  questions,  of  dim 
foreshadowings  of  what  was  to  be  ;  now  He  is  a  man,  who 
has  realized  the  ideal  of  humanity  the  ages  behind  had 
been  straining  after  and  the  ages  before  were  to  worship ; 
a  man,  who  has  lived  His  high,  holy,  lonely  life,  and  is 
going  forward  to  the  death  which  is  to  finish  the  work  His 
Father  gave  Him  to  do.  Then  He  was  an  object  of  beauty 
and  delight ;  the  nature  within  Him  rejoiced,  and  nature 
without  whispered  to  Him  her  divinest  secrets ;  now  He 
is  like  a  root  out  of  the  dry  ground,  without  the  beauty 
that  awakens  desire,  "  a  man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted 
with  grief."  Then  man  turned  to  Him  his  best  and  most 
amiable  side,  as  man  ever  does  to  a  child ;  parents  were 
trustful,  neighbours  kindly,  the  very  doctors  of  the  temple 
gentle,  admiring,  fond,  won  by  the  winsomeness  of  the 
glorious  boy;  now  that  His  physical  is  sublimed  into 
spiritual  loveliness,  they  can  see  in  Him  nothing  to  ad- 
mire ;  leave  Him  so  unloved  that  He  feels  more  homeless 
than  the^ox  that,  when  hunted,  can  hide  in  the  earth,  or 
'  Rev.  XX.  1-6.  ■  Ibid.  vii.  14. 


226  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

the  bird  that  can  sit  and  sing  to  its  brooding  mate.  And 
His  homelessness  was  now  becoming  loneliness ;  the  men 
that  had  known  Him  were  ceasing  to  know,  dreaming 
dreams  that  made  them  unconscious  of  the  realities  that 
awed  His  spirit.  Earth  has  its  changes  for  every  man, 
but  to  whom  did  it  change  as  to  Thee,  O  Thou  Lamb  of 
God  ?  Heaven  was  about  Thy  infancy  ;  may  we  not  say, 
hell  was  about  Thy  manhood  ?  In  Thy  cradle  Thou  didst 
hear  the  song  of  the  heavenly  host  ;  but  on  the  cross 
Thou  wert  to  hear  the  hoarse  and  angry  cries  of  men  who 
mocked  Thy  sufferings  and  demanded  Thy  death. 

Yet  when  the  pilgrimage  began  it  seemed  a  triumphal 
procession.  The  spirit  that  lived  in  the  disciples  pos- 
sessed the  multitude,  and  the  fame  of  this  great  miracle 
clothed  Him  to  their  eyes  in  the  attributes  of  the  expected 
Messiah.  So  we  see  Him  approaching  Jericho,  on  His 
way  from  Ephraim  to  Jerusalem,  the  centre  of  a  wondering 
crowd.  I  Though  He  still  bears  the  name  *'  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,'*  it  is  used  as  if  big  with  latent  significance. 
Curiosity  is  on  tiptoe,  and  reigns  over  rich  and  poor  alike. 
As  He  enters,  a  blind  beggar  invokes  His  aid.  The  mul- 
titude, vain  of  their  wonder,  wished  to  silence  him ;  the 
person  they  marvelled  at  must  be  above  hearing  a  blind 
man's  prayer.  But  the  "  Son  of  David "  heard  and 
healed,  and  the  people,  gratified  while  surprised,  only  the 
more  **  gave  praise  unto  God."  As  He  passes  through 
Jericho  the  crowd  thickens,  and  a  rich  publican,  deter- 
mined to  see  Jesus,  but  unable  to  do  it  for  the  crowd, 
climbs  up  into  a  sycamore  tree.  He  was  a  very  different 
man  from  Bartimseus ;  notice  of  him  was  a  far  more 
serious  thing.  The  publican  was  always  an  offence  to  the 
Jew.  He  was  the  symbol  of  bondage,  of  Gentile  conquest 
and  tyranny.  He  was  worse  than  an  outcast ;  he  was 
one  who  had  sold  himself  to  the  alien  as  an  agent  of  his 

'  Luke  xviii.  35,  36. 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM.  227 

robbery  and  oppression.  He  was  a  son  of  Abraham  who 
had  not  only  dishonoured  his  father,  but  was  helping  the 
heathen  to  work  his  death  and  shame.  And  to  love  such 
a  son,  nay  to  recognize  his  sonship,  was  to  sin  against  the 
father  and  all  the  hopes  represented  by  his  name.  But 
the  most  hated  of  the  hated  race  was  the  rich  publican, 
whose  wealth  had  grown  by  extortion,  who  had  with 
unpitying  hand  robbed  the  widow  and  made  the  orphan 
destitute.  And  Zaccheus  was  a  man  of  this  type,  an 
object  of  horror  to  the  pious  and  hate  to  all.  It  was  the 
right  and  religious  thing  to  pity  and  help  the  beggar,  and 
to  despise  and  avoid  the  publican.  Yet  the  Jesus  who 
came  clothed  in  fresh  glory  from  His  work  on  Bartimaeus 
suddenly  pauses,  looks  at  Zaccheus,  invites  him  to  descend 
and  receive  Him  into  his  house.  The  people  saw  and 
heard  with  amazement  which  deepened  into  anger;  the 
new  horror  eclipsed  the  old  admiration,  and  displeasure 
silenced  praise.  Yet  the  act  was  one  that  expressed  the 
Actor's  mind,  especially  in  its  contrast  with  the  minds 
about  Him,  far  more  forcibly  than  the  most  forcible  speech. 
It  was  symbolical,  signified  that  He  had  come  not  to  work 
miracles,  but  to  change  men ;  not  to  dazzle  and  delight 
the  curious,  but  "  to  seek  and  save  the  lost."  The  men 
around  Him  were  saying,  "Here  is  our  Messiah;  His 
deeds  show  Him  to  be  the  power  of  God.  He  is  on  His 
way  to  Jerusalem  to  establish  and  proclaim  His  empire,  to 
fulfil  our  law,  to  make  the  Jew  the  conqueror  of  the  world 
and  the  king  of  man."  And  He  to  their  evident,  though 
unexpressed,  thoughts  made  answer,  **  I  am  come  to  do, 
not  your  will,  but  my  Father's,  to  be  no  political,  but  a 
spiritual  King,  to  be  not  the  tool  of  the  priest  and  the 
scribe,  but  the  Saviour  of  the  fallen  and  outcast.  And 
look  how  simply,  yet  thoroughly,  My  spiritual  work  can 
be  done.  You  have  had  your  will  with  Zaccheus,  hated 
him,  despised  him,  dealt  wit'i  him  as  with  a  heathen  and  an 


228  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

alien,  and  he  has  answered  your  hatred  with  extortion, 
your  anathemas  with  oppression,  your  censures  with 
heavier  exactions.  But  see  how  potent  are  gentle  words 
and  gracious  acts  ;  under  them  the  bad  publican  becomes 
the  good  Hebrew,  dutiful  to  Israel  and  obedient  to  the 
law  of  love,  giving  half  his  goods  to  feed  the  poor,  and  re- 
storing fourfold  what  he  had  wrongfully  obtained."  Yet  the 
results  only  aggravated  the  offence.  To  fanaticism  good 
done  in  ways  that  displease  it  is  no  better  than  evil,  or 
rather  is  worse,  inasmuch  as  fatal  to  its  exclusive  claims 
to  be  right.  So  Jesus,  to  get  at  the  root  of  the  matter, 
strikes  at  the  source  of  their  false  hopes,  the  thought 
"  that  the  kingdom  of  God  should  immediately  appear." ' 
He  would  not  go  to  Jerusalem  as  their  Messiah,  to  be  in 
their  sense  the  Christ.  The  Jews  had  been  citizens  of  the 
Divine  kingdom,  servants  of  the  King.  Their  duty  was 
to  develop  its  resources,  guard  His  interests,  and  extend 
His  authority.  Some  had  done  so.  Lawgivers  and 
prophets  had  splendidly  served  the  ideals  and  ends  of  the 
kingdom  of  God ;  but  one,  the  one,  too,  in  possession,  had 
not.  He,  the  living  Jew,  had  bound  the  eternal  truth  in 
His  napkin  of  legal  maxims  and  ceremonies,  and  buried  it 
in  the  soil  of  rabbinical  and  sacerdotal  formalism.  He 
feared  God  as  "  an  austere  man  "  feared  to  use  his  trust, 
and  so  buried  it,  cast  it  out  of  his  spirit  into  the  earth 
that  it  might  suffer  and  waste  there  unused  !  And  Jesus 
declines  to  be  judged  by  this  faithless  servant,  claims 
rather  to  judge  and  condemn  him ;  refuses  to  be  measured 
by  his  acts  and  ideas,  asserts  rather  His  right  to  take 
from  him  the  treasure  he  had  so  abused.  The  Jew  had 
thrown  away  his  splendid  opportunity,  and  now  he  was  to 
lose  it.  His  infidelity  to  his  trust  had,  as  its  punishment, 
his  inability  to  understand  the  Christ  of  God,  and  now  he 
was  to  be  to  the  ages  the  grand  illustration  of  the  truth, 
*  Luke  xix.  ii. 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM.  229 

"To  him  that  hath  shall  be  given,  and  from  him  that 
hath  not,  even  that  he  hath  shall  be  taken  away  from 
him."  ^ 

Six  days  before  the  passover  the  pilgrims  reached 
Bethany,  and  there  paused.  Wonder  still  lived  in  the 
village.  Love  still  dwelt  in  the  home  of  Lazarus.  Into 
it  Jesus  entered,  and  there  He  was  consecrated,  anointed 
the  Divine  Sacrifice  which  should  abolish  the  old  faith 
and  create  the  new.  Love  has  often  a  sweet  unconscious 
wisdom,  and  in  its  humblest  ministries  meanings  may  lie 
so  great  as  to  be  visible  to  the  eye  of  God  alone.  And 
here  its  kinship  with  the  saintliest  stood  confessed.  In 
these  closing  hours  nothing  seems  so  tragic  as  the  blind- 
ness of  the  disciples,  and  the  clear  open  vision  of  the 
Master  as  to  the  doom  that  was  to  be.  They  were  full  of 
hope  in  a  soon  to  be  manifested  glory.  He  full  of  prophetic 
agony  as  to  the  death  to  be  endured.  Like  those  who 
knew  His  power  and  believed  in  its  impending  final 
victory,  Lazarus  and  his  sisters  thought  only  of  a  glad 
welcome  to  their  Friend.  The  hour  was  all  sunshine ; 
the  fast-falling  shadow  was  unseen  and  unfeared.  So  His 
coming  was  celebrated  by  a  supper,  and  he  who  had 
known  the  gloom  of  the  grave  tasted  the  deepest  joy  of 
his  life.  But  Mary's  love,  too  deep  for  speech,  too  great 
for  tears,  as  if  she  felt  within  the  joy  the  cold  heart  of 
sorrow,  stole,  while  Martha  waited,  behind  Jesus,  and 
anointed  His  feet  "with  ointment  of  spikenard  very 
costly."  2  And  then,  as  the  fragrance  filled  the  room, 
strange  things  became  manifest.  The  feeling  that  had 
long  slumbered  in  one  breast  broke  into  speech.  "  Why 
this  waste  ?  "  cried  Judas.  "  Why  was  not  this  ointment 
sold  for  three  hundred  pence,  and  given  to  the  poor?"^ 
But  the  unholy  avarice  which  dared  to  clothe  itself  in  the 
form  of  sacred  charity  was  rebuked  by  the  sad  voice 
»  Luke  xix.  26.  *  John  xii.  3.  3  Ibid.  xii.  5. 


230  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OE  CHRIST, 

which  revealed  the  heart  sad  by  the  realized  presence  of 
death :  "  Let  her  alone ;  against  the  day  of  my  burying 
hath  she  kept  this." 

The  words  of  Judas  were  characteristic — the  familiar 
words  of  his  kind  the  world  over.  A  work  of  what  seems 
splendid  improvidence  may  be  greater  than  what  seems  a 
work  of  needed  beneficence.  Some  men  cry  out  against 
waste  when  what  they  mean  is  some  loss  to  their  sordid 
selves.  If  the  money  that  bought  the  '*  ointment  of 
spikenard  "  had  been  "  given  to  the  poor  "  it  would  have 
done  them  little  good ;  but,  used  as  it  was,  it  became  the 
condition  of  an  act  which  has  filled  the  world  with  its 
fragrance,  and  enriched  our  poverty  with  one  of  the  love- 
liest deeds  of  devotion.  In  Mary  and  Judas  two  opposite 
spirits  live:  in  the  one,  a  love  to  Christ  that  seeks  to  live 
for  Him ;  in  the  other,  a  love  to  self  that  means  to  use 
rather  than  serve  Him.  For  Mary  to  give,  for  Judas  to 
receive,  was  to  be  blessed.  To  the  one,  Christ's  suffering 
was  a  welcome  opportunity  for  service ;  to  the  other,  a 
detested  occasion  of  weakness,  an  inexplicable  and  disas- 
trous moment  of  failure.  Mary  is  an  ideal  disciple,  one 
with  love  great  enough  to  transform  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
into  the  Christ  of  Christianity ;  Judas  is  the  type  of  the 
disciple  by  accident,  seeking  by  association  with  Christ 
personal  advantage  rather  than  assimilation  to  Him.  And 
the  results  of  the  discipleship  were  to  be  tragically  unlike  : 
a  growing  joy  to  Mary,  a  growing  misery  to  Judas.  In  the 
society  of  Jesus  she  found  a  congenial  home,  but  he  an 
irritating  and  hateful  element.  As  his  nature  and  Christ's 
developed  alongside  each  other,  their  dissimilarities  andanti- 
pathies  must  have  become  ever  more  pronounced.  The 
man  must  slowly  have  come  to  feel  himself  an  alien  ;  and 
as  the  truth  dawned  upon  him,  he  would  be  first  bewildered, 
then  wretched,  feeling  like  Satan  among  the  sons  of  God, 
only  without  the   serene  cynicism   that   could   sneer  at 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM.  231 

eternal  goodness  in  its  very  presence  and  to  its  very  face  ; 
or  rather,  like  an  evil  spirit,  moody  and  melancholy,  who 
had  strayed  into  a  circle  of  angels,  where  the  contrast  of 
their  light  and  his  darkness  deepens  his  misery  tenfold.  A 
man  that  so  feels  is  near  to  despair,  and  may  do  the  deed 
of  the  desperate.  When  the  last  hope  perishes,  the  des- 
peration that  seeks  revenge  and  begets  remorse  is  sure  to 
come.  For  Judas  the  moment  is  at  hand.  If  Jerusalem 
does  not  reveal  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  he  will  forswear 
Him,  forsake  His  society,  destroy  himself,  and  be  over 
and  done  with  the  profitless  misery  that  is  now  paralyzing 
spirit  and  spoiling  life.  So  within  the  chosen  circle  devo- 
tion waited  to  be  perfected  by  suffering,  and  disappointment 
to  be  avenged  by  treason. 

On  the  next  day  Jesus  entered  Jerusalem.  The  part  of 
the  pilgrim  band  that  had  gone  forward  carried  into  the 
city  the  news  of  His  coming,  and  the  people,  all  enthu- 
siasm for  the  *'  Son  of  David,"  the  Man  who  had  raised 
the  dead,  prepared  for  Him  a  fitting  welcome.  Those  who 
had  passed  the  night  at  Bethany  joined  the  circle  that 
surrounded  the  Master,  partook  of  its  spirit,  and  shared 
its  hopes.  As  they  ascended  Olivet,  feeling  as  if  they  had 
in  their  midst  the  sent  of  God,  the  salvation  of  Israel,  they 
were  joined  by  pilgrims  hastening  to  the  feast,  and  on  the 
summit  they  were  met  by  the  multitudes  who  had  sallied 
from  the  city  to  meet  the  advancing  Christ.  The  enthu- 
siasm grew  as  the  crowd  increased ;  clothes  were  spread, 
palm-branches  scattered  in  His  path,  and  as  each  fresh 
stream  blended  with  the  river,  the  shout  rose,  "  Hosannah  ! 
Blessed  is  the  King  of  Israel  that  cometh  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord." '  That  might  have  seemed  the  proudest 
moment  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  the  moment  when  the  homage 
of  man  was  most  spontaneous  and  most  real ;  but  in  truth 
it  was  one  of  the  saddest.  The  enthusiasm  only  deepened 
*  John  xii.  13. 


232  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

His  solitude,  made  it  more  awful  to  His  spirit,  while 
throwing  upon  the  coming  events  a  more  tragic  colouring. 
Their  praise  was  pain,  for  what  they  praised  was  the  idol 
of  their  own  imaginations,  not  the  Christ  who  was  coming 
to  suffer  and  to  die.  In  the  midst  of  their  joy  He  rode 
possessed  of  the  vivid  consciousness  that  the  discovery  of 
the  truth  would  change  their  jubilant  cry  of  welcome  into, 
the  delirious  shout  of  passion  and  revenge.  So,  as  they 
swept  round  the  shoulder  of  the  hill,  and  the  city  burst 
upon  His  view,  turreted,  temple-crowned,  lying  white  and 
radiant  in  the  glorious  sunlight,  hallowed  by  a  thousand 
sacred  memories,  darkened  by  a  thousand  sins,  the  pathos 
of  the  place  and  the  moment,  the  then  and  the  to  be,  the 
ideal  and  the  actual,  the  men  and  the  city  as  they  seemed 
and  as  they  were,  was  more  than  His  heart  could  bear, 
and  He  wept,  saying,  "  If  thou  hadst  known,  at  least  in 
this  thy  day,  the  things  which  belong  unto  thy  peace  !  but 
now  they  are  hid  from  thine  eyes."  ^ 

Once  within  the  city,  the  great  drama  began  to  unfold 
its  successive  acts.  Jesus  asserted  His  authority  as  the 
Christ  by  purging  the  temple  and  teaching  in  it.^  The 
enthusiasm  of  the  people  paralyzed  the  priests  and  the 
Sanhedrin.3  They  could  not  as  yet  use  popular  passion 
against  Him,  and  so  they  cautiously  assailed  Himself, 
seeking  to  involve  Him  in  conflict  with  the  multitude,  or 
with  Rome,  or  with  Moses.  Their  first  point  was  to  ques- 
tion His  authority.  Whence  had  He  it  ?  Who  gave  it  ?  ^ 
He  replied  by  subtly  revealing  the  purpose  of  their  question 
and  their  consequent  inability  to  judge  His  truth  :  "  The 
baptism  of  John,  whence  was  it  ?  from  heaven  or  of  men  ?  " 
If  they  said,  "  From  heaven,"  they  condemned  their  own 
unbelief;  if  "Of  men,"  they  broke  with  the  people — a 
dangerous  thing  while  they  were  moved  with  Messianic  en- 

*  Luke  xix.  42.  3  Ibid.  xix.  47,48  ;  Markxi.  18. 

■  Ibid.  xix.  45-47.  •♦  Luke  xx.  1,2;  Mark  xi.  25,  26. 


r 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM,  233 

thusiasm  and  inspired  by  Messianic  hopes.  So  they  could 
only  plead  ignorance.  But  how  could  men  too  ignorant 
to  judge  of  the  Baptist's  claims  judge  as  to  the  Christ's  ? 
The  next  point  was  political — an  attempt  to  fifid  occasion 
for  "  delivering  Him  into  the  power  and  authority  of  the 
governor."  '  The  men  chosen  for  this  work  were,  sig- 
nificantly enough,  "  Pharisees  and  Herodians."  ^  The 
Pharisees  were  a  religious,  the  Herodians  a  political, 
party.  The  former  were  the  exponents  and  representatives 
of  the  ancient  theocratic  ideal  ;  the  latter,  the  adherents 
of  the  house  of  Herod.  The  Pharisees  "hated  the  alien, 
believed  that  there  could  be  no  true  king  in  Israel,  unless 
he  came  of  the  family  of  David ;  the  Herodians  served 
and  upheld  the  kinghood  of  the  alien,  the  brood  of  the 
cruel  and  abhorred  Idumean.  The  Pharisees  stood  in 
absolute  antagonism  to  Rome.  To  them  its  sovereignty 
was  the  worst  bondage,  the  dominion  of  the  heathen  over 
the  people  of  God  ;  but  the  Herodians  accepted,  diplo- 
matically at  least,  the  authority  that  had  placed  the  sons 
of  Herod  in  their  respective  kingdoms  or  tetrarchies.  Now 
these  parties,  thus  radically  opposed,  combined  against 
Jesus,  submitting  this  question,  "  Is  it  lawful  to  give 
tribute  to  Caesar?  "^  On  this  point  they  were  divided. 
The  Pharisees  held  it  wrong,  but  the  Herodians  held  it 
right,  at  least  as  a  matter  of  political  expediency.  Hence 
they  would,  with  fine  innocence,  submit  their  difference  to 
His  arbitrament.  But  the  innocence  masked  a  deep 
design.  If  He  said,  "  It  is  lawful,"  He  would  offend  the 
people  and  the  strongest  and  noblest  national  beliefs  and 
hopes ;  if  He  said,  "  It  is  not  lawful,"  He  would  come 
into  collision  with  Rome,  the  power  that,  with  equal  ease 
and  equal  coldness,  crushed  its  least  and  its  greatest 
opponent,  and  then  passed  serenely  on.  But  it  is  not  in 
the  nature  of  wisdom  to  play  into  the  hands  of  cunning. 
'  Luke  XX.  20.  '  Mark  xii.  13,  3  Luke  xx.  22  ;  Mark  xii.  14. 
16 


234  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

He  said,  "  Show  me  a  denarius,"  and  asked,  "  Whose  is 
the  image  and  superscription  »'  "  "  Csesar's."  *'  Then 
the  coin  is  his — minted,  issued  by  him,  used,  circulated  by 
you.  It  is  a  coin  by  his  act,  is,  too,  regarded  and  treated 
by  you  as  money,  and  therefore  the  question  is  none.  The 
use  of  Caesar's  money  is  tribute  to  Caesar.  Render  to  him 
his,  and  to  God  God's." 

But  though  the  Pharisees  were  vanquished,  the  Saddu- 
cees  were,  if  not  of  a  subtler,  of  an  astuter  race.  They  had 
been  educated  in  a  fine  contempt  for  vulgar  superstitions, 
the  traditions  and  doctrines  for  which  the  Pharisees  were 
so  zealous.  They  did  not  believe  in  development  or  a  con- 
tinuous revelation.  God  had  spoken  to  Moses,  but  had 
been  silent  ever  since.  The  1  iw  had  embodied  His  will; 
what  was  not  law  was  of  man,  not  of  God.  And  so  they 
were  exceedingly  zealous  for  Moses,  and  exceedingly  jealous 
of  "  the  traditions  of  the  fathers."  They  had  hitherto 
left  the  conflict  with  Jesus  to  the  Pharisees,  rather  pleased 
that  their  rivals  should  be  so  beset  and  bewildered ;  but 
now  that  Caiaphas  had  declared  His  death  to  be  necessary, 
they  would  confront  and  overpower  Him  with  the  authority 
of  their  Lawgiver.  They  selected  their  point  carefully. 
Jesus  had  explicitly  affirmed  His  belief  in  a  future  state,' 
and  the  Pharisees  were  here  weak,  for  they  believed  in  it 
as  firmly  as  He.  But  the  Sadducees  were  strong ;  they 
did  not  find  the  belief  in  Moses ;  found  it,  indeed,  con- 
spicuously absent  and  explicitly  disproved.  So  they 
elaborated  their  most  conclusive  argument,  and  presented 
it  thus  :  "  Master,  Moses  wrote  unto  us,  If  any  man's 
brother  die,  having  a  wife,  and  he  die  without  children, 
that  his  brother  should  take  his  wife,  and  raise  up  seed 
unto  his  brother.  There  were  therefore  seven  brethren  ; 
and  the  first  took  a  wife,  and  died  without  children.  And 
the  second  took  her  to  wife,  and  he  died  childless.  And  the 
*  Luke  xvi.  19-31. 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM,  235 

third  took  her ;  and  in  like  manner  the  seven  also ;  and 
they  left  no  children,  and  died.  Last  of  all  the  woman 
died  also.  Therefore  in  the  resurrection  whose  wife  of 
them  is  she  ?  for  seven  had  her  to  wife."  ^  The  case  was 
a  splendid  one  for  discussion  in  the  schools,  excellent  for 
the  exercise  of  subtle  wits.  If  there  is  a  future  state 
where  all  these  husbands  are  alive,  and  this  poor  over- 
married  woman  alive  also,  *'  whose  wife  shall  she  be  ? 
Come  now,  good  Master,  tell  us."  They  did  not  raise  the 
question  whether  immortal  relations  must  be  adjusted  to 
provisional  arrangements;  they  took  for  granted  that  a 
temporary  and  barbarous  expedient  was  an  eternal  law. 
Yet  their  own  hearts  might  have  answered  their  question. 
We  may  imagine  in  the  company  that  came  to  Jesus  a 
young  Sadducee,  with  the  wistful  sadness  in  the  eyes  that 
can  be  seen  only  where  the  light  that  has  gladdened  life 
has  been  extinguished.  He  has  known  the  joy  of  posses- 
sion and  the  agony  of  loss.  A  gentle  womanly  presence 
had  once  made  his  manhood  beautiful,  his  home  happy, 
his  life  rich  with  sweet  and  soothing  grace.  But  just  when 
his  joy  was  deepest,  hateful  death  had  come,  and  left  him 
sitting  dumb  in  the  shadow  of  a  great  affliction.  The  first 
desolation  is  past,  but  only  that  a  level  and  cheerless 
melancholy  might  come,  which  forces  ever  to  his  lips  the 

y»  O  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand 

And  the  sound  of  a  voice  that  is  still ! 

Yet  no  hand  is  stretched  through  the  darkness,  no  voice  an- 
swers out  of  the  eternal  silence  :  and  he  can  only  mourn, 

The  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me. 

But  had  such  an  one  been  in  the  company,  would  not  the 

longing,  the  strong  desire,  that  could  almost  create  the 

belief  in  immortality,  born  of  necessity  and  the  very  nature 

^  Luke  XX.  28-33. 


2^6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

of  his  own  spirit,  have  made  him  loathe  the  cruel  frivolity 
of  the  case  supposed,  with  its  primitive  and  provisional 
law,  and  listen  for  words  that  might  shed  upon  his  own 
sorrow  the  consolation  of  a  great  hope  ?  And  if  he  had 
been  there,  he  would  not  have  been  disappointed.  Jesus 
lifted  the  question  into  a  region  far  above  the  heaven  of  the 
Sadducean  spirit.  They  erred  through  ignorance.'  He 
recognized  no  sanctity,  no  universal  and  eternal  validity,  in 
the  law  of  a  semi-civilized  people.  In  the  resurrection  men 
were  not  governed  by  the  law  of  Moses;  they  were  '*  as 
the  angels  of  God."  Their  natures  determined  their  rela- 
tions, affinities  created  society.  And  the  Highest  was  the 
regulative  nature.  The  living  God  involved  the  life  of 
those  that  lived  to  Him.  Men  who  lived  in  communion 
with  Him  became  as  needful  to  Him  as  He  was  to  them. 
And  this  truth  was  expressed  in  the  ancient  saying,  "  I 
am  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob."  He  could 
not  be  their  God  unless  He  was  a  real  Being  to  them ; 
they  could  not  be  real  beings  to  Him  unless  they  still 
lived.  To  be  the  God  of  them.  He  must  be  a  God  to  them; 
and  He  could  be  a  God  only  to  living  persons,  not  to 
silent  memories  or  empty  names. 

Jesus  thus  found  immortality  at  the  very  heart  of  the 
Mosaic  law,  involved  in  the  distinctive  name  of  God, 
Jahveh,  the  living,  the  creative.  The  Sadducees  erred 
because  they  did  not  know  God.  If  they  had  rightly  con- 
ceived Him,  they  had  strongly  believed  in  the  immortal 
being  of  man.  The  man  who  is  made  in  the  image  of  God 
is  made  to  be  as  God,  and  be  like  Him  for  ever.  The 
thought  embodied  in  His  answer  was  so  new  and  strange 
to  the  Sadducees  that  it  was  almost  like  an  answer  in  an 
unknown  tongue.  They  were  silenced,  bewildered,  and 
humiliated  before  the  multitude,  who  '*  were  astonished  at 
His  doctrine."* 

»  Matt.  xxii.  29.  "  Ibid.  xxii.  33. 


JERICHO  AND  JERUSALEM,  237 

And  so  His  enemies  could  not  so  involve  Him  either 
with  the  people,  or  with  Caesar,  or  with  Moses,  as  to  carry 
through  their  expedient.  But  what  they  failed  to  do  His 
own  revelation  of  Himself  accomplished.  The  revelation 
was  double,  by  antipathy  and  by  sympathy,  the  one  show- 
ing what  He  was  not — to  the  Jews ;  the  other  showing 
what  He  was — to  His  disciples.  As  regards  the  first,  it 
was  made  both  by  action  and  speech.  He  acted  like  the 
Man  of  sorrows,  not  like  the  victorious  Messiah.  There  is 
nothing  more  marvellous,  even  in  the  Gospels,  than  the 
self-repression  of  Jesus  in  His  latest  hours.  He  was  in 
every  respect  a  contrast  and  contradiction  to  the  Messiah 
of  tradition,  and  He  emphasized,  as  it  were,  the  points  of 
difference.  The  homage  of  ignorance  was  to  Him  only 
latent  aversion,  and  He  could  not  allow  His  true  nature 
to  remain  unknown.  And  so,  the  more  He  revealed  Him- 
self, the  cooler  grew  their  enthusiasm;  the  less  He  fulfilled 
their  expectations,  the  more  dubious,  suspicious,  watchful 
for  offence  they  became.  And  what  they  wanted  they  found 
in  His  words.  His  discourses  in  Jerusalem  predicted  the 
overthrow,  not  the  triumph,  of  Judaism,  denounced  the 
hypocrisy  that  reigned  in  high  places,  praised  the  piety 
that  lived  in  poverty  and  seclusion.^  The  city,  the  temple, 
the  worship,  the  very  people  were  to  perish,  and  only  a 
remnant  was  to  be  saved.  False  Christs  were  to  rise,  be 
welcomed,  believed,  followed  ;  confusion  was  to  grow  into 
anarchy,  and  anarchy  to  end  in  death.^  This  was  strange 
language  for  one  who  claimed  to  be  the  Christ  to  use 
in  Jerusalem,  and  respecting  the  Jews.  History  was  to 
prove  it  true ;  but  meanwhile  it  was  held  worse  than  the 
worst  falsehood.  But  while  He  was  becoming  to  the 
people  as  an  enemy  by  telling  them  the  truth,  He  was 
privily  drawing  His  disciples  round  Him,  opening  to  them 

*  Matt,  xxiii.  13,  ff.  ;  Luke  xxi.  1-4. 

*  Lake  xxi.  5-24  ;  Matt.  xxiv.  3-31. 


238  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE   OF  CHRIST 

the  inmost  secrets  of  His  spirit,  the  deepest  mysteries  of 
His  truth.  They  heard,  but  were  slow  of  heart  to  believe. 
Yet  in  speaking  to  the  men  that  were.  He  spoke  to  the 
men  that  were  to  be :  and  words  not  understood  then 
became  in  later  days  words  of  spirit  and  life.  What 
estranged  the  heart  of  Jerusalem  was  to  draw  the  heart  of 
the  world  ;  and  the  wisdom  of  Christ  was  to  be  justified 
to  all  after  ages  by  the  events  which  proved  that  His 
antagonism  to  Judaism  was  the  sublimest  service  to  man. 


XIV. 

GETHSEMANE. 

In  the  dark  eventide  before  the  final  agony  the  souls  of 
the  disciples  were  clothed  in  darkness,  but  the  soul  of  the 
Master  walked  in  light.  They  were  as  men  that  dreamed  ; 
He  was  as  the  one  wakeful  being  in  a  world  of  dreamful 
sleepers,  and  His  wakefulness  was  more  than  the  world's 
sleep.  Their  talk  seems  like  the  cheery  and  heedless 
prattle  of  a  child  at  the  knees  of  a  man  whose  heart  grief 
has  cloven  in  twain,  or  like  the  babbling  of  a  summer  brook 
under  a  sky  dark  with  thunder-gloom  and  gathering  storm. 
Yet  as  to  the  Master  these  figures  are  impertinent.  The 
sorrow  that  filled  His  soul  did  not  quench  His  sympathy ; 
the  clouds  that  enfolded  His  spirit  did  not  shut  from  those 
who  had  clustered  round  Him  the  sunshine  of  His  love. 
If  they  live  with  touching,  almost  tragic,  unconsciousness 
of  the  fate  He  sees  approaching  with  inevitable  step  and 
awful  form,  He,  living  at  the  same  moment,  as  it  were, 
in  the  present  and  in  the  future,  with  suffering  in  idea 
translated  into  utmost  reality,  thinks  of  His  thoughtless 
disciples,  and  with  forward-looking  care  seeks  to  arm  them 
against  the  evil  day.  And  so  here  emerges  one  of  His 
divinest  qualities,  illustrated  in  action  at  every  moment 
of  His  closing  sufferings.  Sorrow  is  often  selfish,  loves  to 
be  indulged,  to  sit  blind  and  deaf  to  the  world  and  duty, 
ministered  unto,  but  not  ministering.  But  here  is  suifer- 
ing,  the  greatest  ever  known,  the  deepest,  intensest  that 
ever  strained  a  heart,  yet  He  who  bears  it,  and  is  being 


240         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

borne  by  it  to  death,  broods  over  His  unsuspecting  children, 
thinks  of  their  agony  when  His  shall  have  reached  its 
climax  and  done  its  w^ork,  thinks  of  their  misery  when  He 
is  laid,  the  smitten  Shepherd,  in  the  tomb  of  Joseph,  and 
they,  the  scattered  flock,  shall  have  fled  every  man  to  his 
own.  Were  there  nothing  else,  this  sublime  thoughtfal- 
ness,  this  conquest  of  the  sorrow  that  conquered  not  Him, 
but  His  life,  would  speak  Him  in  a  real  sense  Divine. 

It  is,  then,  in  His  last  sorrows  that  Christ  seems  most 
Christly.  "  Though  He  were  a  Son,  yet  learned  He  obe- 
dience by  the  things  which  He  suffered,"  and  through  His 
sufferings  He  was  "  made  perfect  "  as  *'  the  Captain  of 
our  salvation."  ^  His  sorrows  have  been  the  great  inter- 
preter of  Christ  to  man ;  in  them  lie  the  source  and  secret 
of  His  power.  They  have  in  a  real  sense  redeemed  man, 
and  were,  in  a  sense  no  less  real,  universal,  doing  for  the 
race  what  the  discipline  of  suffering  is  designed  to  do  for  the 
individual.  The  German  who,  while  a  modern,  had  a  genius 
at  once  most  classical  and  pagan,  has  introduced  us  to  "the 
sanctuary  of  sorrow."  But  the  "  sanctuary  "  he  conceived 
was  little  else  than  the  outer  court  of  the  temple — his  hand 
had  never  touched  the  veil,  his  foot  had  never  crossed  the 
threshold  of  the  holy  of  holies.  As  there  is  a  path  the 
eagle's  eye  has  not  seen,  so  there  is  a  '*  Divine  depth  of 
sorrow  "  which  the  clear  but  cold  eye  of  Goethe  never 
descried.  Its  poetic  depths  his  cultured  thought  had 
sounded ;  its  religions  were  to  him  unknown,  even  unsus- 
pected. He  heard  in  it  "  the  still,  sad  music  of  humanity," 
but  not  the  voice  of  God.  Yet  without  that  voice  the 
music  is  but  discord.  If  only  through  sorrow  the  deepest 
things  in  a  man  can  be  educed,  so  only  through  it  can  the 
deepest  truths  in  God  and  the  universe  be  seen.  A  tear 
is  a  telescope  which  reveals  to  the  eye  that  can  use  it  a 
heaven,  otherwise  concealed,  of  starlit  galaxies  and  shining 
*  Heb.  V.  8  ;  ii.  la 


GETHSEMANE.  241 

suns.  God  is  never  so  personal  and  real  to  man  as  when, 
in  the  darkness  of  some  great  sorrow,  the  soul  stretches 
out  *'  lame  hands  of  faith,"  gropes  till  it  grasps  His  right 
hand,  and  is  by  it  led  up  into  the  light.  And  the  height 
to  which  He  leads  us  is  a  sun-gilded  mount  of  vision,  far 
above  the  clouds  and  storms  of  earth,  where  the  soul  can 
rest  as  in  the  lap  of  God,  hearing  the  songs  of  peace  and 
hope  the  angels  in  Paradise  sing. 

As  angels  in  some  brighter  dreams, 

Call  to  the  soul  when  man  doth  sleep  ; 
So  some  strange  thoughts  transcend  our  wonted  themes, 

And  into  glory  peep. 

And  the  sorrow  of  Christ  has  had  as  beneficial  amission 
for  humanity  as  personal  sorrow  for  the  individual.  It  has 
so  revealed  God  to  man,  and  so  bound  man  to  God,  as  to 
be  his  salvation. 

The  history  of  the  Passion,  which  is  to  us  the  greatest  of 
all  histories,  is  what  wx  must  now  attempt  to  understand. 
At  the  outset  we  must  note  the  time,  the  Thursday  even- 
ing, by  Roman  reckoning  the  13th  of  the  month,  but  by 
Jewish  the  14th,  the  day  beginning  for  the  Jew  with  sun- 
set. The  morrow  is  the  great  day  of  the  preparation,  and 
the  day  after  the  great  day  of  the  feast.  The  days  that 
have  passed  since  the  triumphal  entry  have  been  full  of 
change.  The  people  have  been  disappointed,  and  a  dis- 
appointed mob  is  a  dangerous  thing,  prepared  to  break  or 
burn  the  idol  it  can  always  make,  but  that  cannot  always 
fulfil  its  maker's  intentions.  The  Jesus  it  had  hailed  as 
the  Christ  had  proved  not  its  Christ,  and  to  be  not  its 
Christ  was  to  be  as  good  as  none.  The  rulers  knew  the 
people,  read  the  meaning  of  their  disappointment,  and  met 
at  the  house  of  Caiaphas  to  consider  how  the  foolish  mob 
could   be   made   to   do   their   malignant   will.^      Heaven 

*  Matt.  xxvi.  3-5. 


242         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

seemed  to  bless  their  conclave.  To  them  came  one  who 
had  followed  the  Galilean.^  Discipleship  bad  become  im- 
possible to  Judas.  The  Master  who  had  disappointed  him 
and  whom  he  had  deserted,  who  had  become  to  him  so 
offensive  in  His  friendless  and  outcast  loneliness,  must  be 
crushed,  ended,  that  he  might  be  free.  While  wicked  for- 
tune favoured  the  evil,  the  Providence  that  guides  the  good 
appeared  no  less  kind.  Jesus  came  from  Bethany,  entered 
the  city  in  the  twilight,  and  sat  down  with  His  disciples  in 
the  humble  room  where  the  last  supper  was  prepared. 
There,  while  the  city  was  waiting  its  festival,  while  the 
priests  were  laying  the  lines  that  were  to  close  round  the 
Holiest,  He  and  His  little  band  celebrated  in  celestial  calm 
the  supper  that  was  to  be  for  all  lands  and  for  all  time  the 
memory  and  mirror  of  that  sacred  night.  So  in  our  streets, 
in  our  homes,  in  our  very  lives,  heaven  and  hell  meet  and 
touch,  while  to  our  coarse  eyes  every  place  is  common  and 
every  time  common  day. 

That  supper  is  an  event  which  profoundly  affects  the 
imagination.  Its  very  simplicity  increases  its  significance. 
The  meaning  it  bears  to  faith  is  marvellous  on  the  one 
hand ;  the  place  it  has  filled,  the  work  it  has  done  in  his- 
tory, as  marvellous  on  the  other.  If  the  vision  had  been 
granted  to  Christ  of  what  it  was  to  be  and  do,  would  it  not, 
even  when  His  sufferings  were  deepest,  have  turned  His 
sorrow  into  joy?  He  would  have  seen  His  supper  sur- 
viving for  ages,  simple  in  form,  transcendent  in  meaning, 
a  living  centre  of  unity  for  His  scattered  disciples,  a  source 
of  comfort,  strength,  peace,  purity  to  wearied  and  sinful 
men.  In  upper  rooms,  in  catacombs,  where  the  dust  of 
the  dead  rested,  and  the  spirits  of  the  living  met  to  speak 
to  each  other  words  of  holiest  cheer;  in  desert  places  and 
moorlands,  where  hunted  fugitives  assembled  to  listen  1^ 
a  voice  which,  though  a  man's,  seemed  God's;  in  cathe* 
'  Matt.  xxvi.  14;  Mark  xiv.  10  ;  Luke  xxii.  3. 


GETHSEMANE.  243 

drals,  where  form  and  space  spoke  majestically  to  the  eye, 
and  lofty  music  to  the  ear;  in  rude  huts  in  savage  or 
heathen  lands  ;  in  ornate  churches  in  wealthy,  busy,  and 
intellectual  cities — men  of  the  most  varied  types  and  condi- 
tions, saintly  and  sinful,  ignorant  and  educated,  simple  and 
gentle,  rich  and  poor,  peer  and  peasant,  sovereign  and  sub- 
ject, priest  and  people,  forming  a  multitude  no  man  can 
number,  have  for  centuries  met  together  to  celebrate  this 
supper,  and  be  by  it  made  wiser,  happier,  holier.  The 
actual  and  ideal  history  of  the  rite  stands  in  strong  con- 
trast to  its  institution.  Of  the  twelve  men  who  sat  and 
broke  bread  with  Jesus,  of  the  priests  who  were  so  anxious 
to  work  out  their  *'  expedient,"  of  the  Scribes  who  wer^ 
laboriously  interpreting  and  making  tradition,  of  the 
Romans  who  were  ruling  and  guarding  Jerusalem — could 
any  one  have  dreamed  what  this  obscure  and  humble  sup- 
per was  to  be  for  man,  and  to  do  for  the  world  ?  Yet  it  is 
God's  way  to  make  the  foolish  things  of  the  world  confound 
the  things  that  are  wise,  and  His  way  has  ever  in  the  end 
proved  the  wisest  and  best  for  man. 

But  it  is  of  special  significance  to  our  history  to  note 
the  thoughts  that  at  the  supper  possessed  the  mind  of 
Christ.  He  is  to  Himself  evidently  a  sacrifice.  The  bread 
that  signifies  the  body  broken  and  eaten  has  a  distinctly 
sacrificial  import.^  The  blood  is  to  be  "  shed  for  many  for 
the  remission  of  sins."  *  And  it  was  no  mere  sacrifice,  it 
was  one  that  symbolized  a  new  relation  of  God  to  man, 
and  man  to  God — His  blood  was  the  blood  of  "  the  new 
covenant."  The  term  hiadrjKrj  is  here  of  peculiar  import- 
ance. It  does  not  mean  either  a  covenant  in  the  sense  of 
contract  or  agreement,  or  a  testament  in  the  sense  of  a 
will,  but  it  has  a  meaning  which  combines  ideas  distinctive 
of  both.      In  Sca67]K7j  there  are  the  conditional  elements 

'  Matt.  xxvi.  26.     C/.  Lev.  vii.  6 ;  Exod.  xii.  8. 
«  Matt.  xxvi.  28.     C/.  Exod.  xxx.  la 


2  44  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

necessary  to  a  covenant,  and  the  absolute  elements 
necessary  to  a  testament ;  the  first,  so  far  as  it  denotes 
conditions,  revealed  and  established  by  God,  vv^hich  man 
must  accept  and  obey  before  he  can  stand  in  right  relation 
with  Him  ;  the  second,  so  far  as  it  denotes  these  conditions 
as  the  direct  and  independent  and  absolute  expressions  of 
the  Divine  w^ill.  Covenant  is  inapplicable,  in  so  far  as  it 
signifies  that  the  two  parties  are  in  an  equal  degree  con- 
cerned in  laying  down  the  conditions  and  enforcing  obe- 
dience to  them ;  testament,  in  so  far  as  it  implies  that  the 
death  of  the  testator  is  necessary  to  its  validity,  or  that  its 
terms  are  as  rigid  and  inflexible  as  those  of  a  dead  man's 
will.  There  is  a  point,  indeed,  where  the  two  notions 
almost  coalesce.  A  testament  may  be  a  sort  of  post- 
humous covenant;  a  covenant,  a  sort  of  pre-mortuary 
testament.  Where  a  will  is  conditional,  it  is  because  of 
the  wish  of  a  now  dead  man  to  act  as  if  he  were  still  alive; 
where  a  covenant  is  absolute,  it  is  because  of  the  wish  of  a 
living  man  to  act  as  if  he  were  dead,  a  being  whose  will 
had  received  final  and  irrevocable  expression.  But  even 
so,  we  cannot  allow  either  term  to  be  an  adequate  trans- 
lation of  hLadrjKT],  but  must  regard  it  as  containing  all 
the  absolute  elements  of  the  one  with  the  conditional  ele- 
ments of  the  other.  So  understood,  we  may  define  the  Kaivrf 
hiadrjKri  as  the  revelation  of  a  new  relation  on  God's  part, 
with  the  conditions  necessary  to  the  realization  of  a  new 
and  correspondent  relation  on  man's.  This  revelation,  as 
the  expression  of  an  individual  will,  maybe  denoted  Testa- 
ment, but  as  the  exhibition  of  a  real  relation  on  God's  part, 
and  a  possible  relation  on  ours,  with  the  conditions  on  which 
its  realization  depends,  it  may  be  termed  a  Covenant.  The 
KaLVY]  hiaOrjKrj  becomes  thus  almost  equal  to  the  New 
Religion  ;  it  presents  God  in  a  character  that  makes  Him 
a  new  Being  to  man,  and  shows  man  how  to  realize  a  new 
relation  to  God.     The  Hebrew  equivalent  of  BiadrJKrj,  nn^ 


GEJHSEMANE.  245 

was  used  in  the  same  sense,  and  so  applied  alike  to  the 
legal  economy  of  Moses  and  the  spiritual  economy  of  the 
prophets.^  Each  was  the  revelation  of  God  in  a  new  cha- 
racter and  relation,  with  a  new  correspondent  relation  made 
possible  on  the  part  of  man.  And  these  ideas  were,  with- 
out doubt,  present  to  the  mind  of  Christ  when  He  solemnly 
used  the  word.  He  was  instituting  a  New  Religion,  re- 
vealing a  new  God  to  man,  making  man  a  new  being  to 
God.  And  this  religion  He  founded  in  sacrifice,  the  sacri- 
fice of  Himself.  The  supper  was  to  be  the  Feast  of  Com- 
memoration, was  to  celebrate  the  hour  and  act  of  creation. 
The  founding  of  the  old  hLaOrjKj]  had  been  ratified  by  blood,^ 
the  founding  of  the  new  must  be  the  same.  In  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ  the  essential  Fatherhood  of  God  was  to  be  made 
manifest,  and  the  spiritual  sonship  of  man  made  possible. 
Now  Jesus,  full  of  the  great  thoughts  and  emotions  that 
had  at  once  created  the  supper  and  been  created  by  it, 
passed  with  His  disciples  out  into  the  cool  night  air.  The 
city  was  asleep.  All  was  still,  save  for  here  the  sigh  of  a 
weary  pilgrim  resting  uneasily  on  his  mat,  there  the  quick 
footfall  of  a  wanderer  hastening  to  his  home,  or  the 
measured  tramp  of  the  sentinel  walking  his  rounds.  They 
issued  out  of  the  gate  that  looked  towards  Olivet,  crossed 
the  Kedron,  and  were  soon  hidden  in  an  olive  grove.  There 
is  an  awful  silence  in  a  sleeping  wood,  but  never  did  the 
silence  speak  to  a  heart  so  still  in  it  agony  as  the  one  that 
was  then  seeking  in  Gethsemane  a  place  of  seclusion  and 
prayer.  That  seclusion  seems  too  sacred  to  be  broken. 
Grief  is  always  holy,  and  the  holier  the  sufferer  the  less 
may  we  profane  his  sorrow  by  our  presence.  A  great 
painter  who  painted  the  Man  of  Sorrows  as  an  act  of 
highest  worship  showed  at  once  His  genius  and  His 
reverence  by  hiding  the  marred  visage,  leaving  the  less 

'  Exod.  xxxiv.  28  ;  Jer.  xxxi.  34  ;  Isa.  liv.  9,  la 
*  Exod.  xxiv.  6-8. 


246  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

noble  parts  to  reveal  the  agony  that  had  broken  His  heart. 
So  to  us  Gethsemane  ought  ever  to  be  a  veiled  Holy  of 
holies,  to  be  visited,  if  at  all,  only  at  moments  when  we 
can  look  with  purified  eyes,  and  allow  the  meaning  of  the 
Saviour  in  His  passion  to  steal  softly  into  our  minds.  We 
are  here  on  holy  ground,  and  must  stand,  as  it  were,  with 
spirit  bareheaded  and  barefooted,  reverent  while  inquiring. 

And  here  it  is  necessary  to  note  the  limits  of  our 
inquiry.  It  is  historical,  not  theological.  Few  things, 
indeed,  have  more  profaned  the  sufferings  of  Christ  than 
an  over-curious  speculation.  Their  nature,  their  degree 
and  value,  have  all  been  discussed  and  estimated,  their 
quantity  and  quality  most  precisely  determined.  With 
such  questions  we  have  here  and  now  no  concern. 
Our  business  meanwhile  is  to  attempt  to  present  a  great 
moment  in  a  holy  and  perfect  life,  in  relation  to  the 
person  and  history  of  Him  who  lived  it. 

Now,  looking  at  it  from  this  point  of  view,  we  can  say 
that  Gethsemane  does  not  stand  alone.  It  is  related  alike 
to  Christ's  past  and  future — is  an  echo  of  the  one  and  a 
prophecy  of  the  other — and  it  is  so  related  because  of  its 
essential  connection  with  His  person.  If  Gethsemane 
is  to  be  understood,  it  must  be  understood  through  the 
person  and  character  of  the  Sufferer.  The  agony  of 
the  particular  moment  came  from  the  essential  nature  of 
Him  who  endured  it  ;  and  so  to  understand  the  one  we 
must  seek  to  know  the  other.  It  is  essentially  a  matter 
of  the  spirit.  In  Christ,  sorrow  of  spirit  created  physical 
pain;  the  physical  pain  did  not  create  the  spiritual  sorrow. 
His  cry  was,  "  My  soul  is  exceeding  sorrowful."  The 
intensity  of  the  sorrow  only  became  manifest  when  the 
touch  of  a  Roman  spear  showed  that  He  had  died  of  a 
broken  heart.  But  it  was  the  kind  and  quality  of  the 
spirit  that  made  the  sorrow  ;  the  pre-eminence  of  the 
sufferings  was  due  to  the  pre-eminence  of  the  Sufferer. 


GETHSEMANE.  247 

Given  the  nature  and  spirit  of  Christ,  and  sorrow, 
unique,  transcendent,  was  to  Him  a  Divine  necessity. 
There  is  a  sort  of  adaptation  between  a  sinful  man  and 
a  sinful  earth.  The  two  suit  each  other.  Though  it  is 
but  a  dismal  home  and  he  a  dismal  inhabitant,  yet  he 
has  never  known  a  better,  and,  almost  unconscious  of  its 
wretchedness,  he  settles  down,  grimly  determined  to  be 
as  happy  as  possible.  But  the  sinless  Jesus  had  only 
the  relation  of  diametric  opposition  to  this  sinful  world. 
In  it  there  was  nothing  correspondent  to  what  was  in 
Him.  The  feeling  of  utter  homelessness  which  He  must 
have  had  while  here  gives  a  solemn  plaintiveness  and 
depth  to  His  contrast  of  the  homeless  Son  of  man  with 
the  foxes  of  the  earth  and  the  birds  of  the  air.  A  poet 
tells  us — 

Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy. 

Now,  if  this  heaven,  which  is  perhaps  not  so  much  about 
as  within  us  in  our  infancy,  were  to  continue  into  our 
manhood,  earth  would  seem  to  us  almost  a  hell.  A  child 
brought  up  in  a  lazar-house,  to  whom  green  fields  and  the 
glory  of  the  summer  earth  were  ahke  unknown,  who  had 
never  seen  other  men  than  those  smitten  with  "  the  curse 
of  God,"  would  come  to  feel  as  if  his  strange  abode  were 
home-like  and  natural.  But  introduce  a  fresh  blooming 
lad  from  the  hill-side,  familiar  with  the  "  celestial  light  " 
in  which  earth  is  apparelled,  with  the  breath  of  the 
flowers,  the  sound  of  the  sea,  the  glory  of  the  sky,  with 
the  faces  of  noble  and  healthy  men,  and  him  the  ghastly 
lepers,  the  foetid  atmosphere,  the  steaming  disease  would 
appal  and  dismay.  We  are  the  children  of  the  lazar- 
house,  familiar  to  insensibility  with  its  misery  ;  Christ 
the  blooming  youth,  witn  a  soul  all  open  to  perceive  and 
feel  man's  profound  wretchedness.  He  understood  it 
better  than  even  the  sufferers  themselves,  and  felt  it  more. 
His   sympathy  had  a  strange  insertive    power,    causing 


248  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  01  CHRIST. 

Him  to  feel  and  bear  the  man's  sorrows  much  more  than 
even  the  man  himself.  And  if  we  think  how  He  knew 
the  hearts  of  men  —  the  secret  griefs,  the  unuttered 
regrets,  the  pining  miseries,  the  blighted  hopes,  the 
thwarted  wishes,  the  corroding  remorse,  that  dwelt  like 
ghastly  spectres,  or  burned  like  devouring  flames,  in 
almost  every  human  breast  —  and  how  that  insertive 
sympathy  would  make  Him  feel  all  as  His  own,  can  we 
fail  to  see  that  there  must  have  been  in  Him,  through  the 
mere  fact  of  His  living  here,  a  sorrow  such  as  the  col- 
lective sufferings  of  His  time  gathered  into  one  soul 
would  but  poorly  express?  Life  to  Him  was  passion, 
sympathy,  and  pain. 

Consider  again  :  Jesus  alone  of  those  who  have  lived 
on  earth  knew  the  inner  essence  and  final  issues  of  sin. 
The  holier  a  man  is,  the  more  perfectly  does  he  under- 
stand sin  ;  the  more  wicked  he  is,  the  less.  The  Prodigal 
could  not  see  into  the  depravity  and  defilement  of  the  "far 
country  "  as  his  father  did.  The  poor  victim  of  seduction 
who  has  touched  the  lowest  deep  possible  to  a  woman's 
soul,  cannot,  even  in  her  hour  of  remorse,  see  her  sin  as 
her  pure  celestial-minded  sister  sees  it.  And  in  propor- 
tion to  a  soul's  consciousness  of  what  sin  is  will  be  its 
misery  at  the  sight  of  it.  Hell  must  be  more  intolerable 
to  an  angel's  thought  than  to  a  devil's  experience.  A 
pure  spirit  in  the  regions  of  the  lost  would,  as  more  con- 
scious of  the  evil  and  issues  of  sin,  be  more  wretched  than 
the  lost  themselves.  Fancy  a  man  suddenly  gifted  with  an 
intuitive  faculty,  rendering  him  as  able  to  read  the  human 
heart  as  the  eye  is  to  read  the  human  face.  He  may  feel 
at  first  proud  of  his  rare  power,  at  the  curious  and 
extensive  knowledge  it  gives.  He  studies  men — deciphers 
the  strange  hieroglyphs  written  on  character  and  memory 
He  makes  extraordinary  discoveries,  reversing  most  of 
his  former  judgments.     He    sees   that   a    heart,  thought 


GETHSEMANE.  249 

sound,  is  in  ruins,  though  now  and  then  visited  by  beauti- 
ful moonbeams,  as  if  an  angel  had  descended  into  it,  and 
shed  from  its  wings  a  soft  white  light.  He  sees  a  head 
perplexed  with  doubt  while  the  tongue  utters  faith.  The 
inner  man  of  the  statesman,  poet,  preacher,  furnishes  a 
strange  contrast  to  the  outer,  and  at  it  our  heart- seer  now 
sneers,  now  laughs,  now  weeps.  But  soon  other  scenes 
open.  Suddenly  he  confronts  a  man  in  whom  the  brutal 
passions  reign  and  struggle  as  did  the  "hell-hounds"  in 
Milton's  Sin.  Now  he  meets  a  prodigal  in  the  "  far 
country,"  with  "  wasted  substance,"  driving  out  the 
stranger's  "  swine,"  and  feeding  on  their  "  husks."  Then 
he  passes  wrapped  in  the  thin  torn  garments  of  long- faded 
finery,  a  woman 

Mad  from  life's  history, 
Glad  to  death's  mystery, 

bearing  in  her  heart  an  indescribable  record  of  suffering, 
wrong,  ruin,  and  sin.  And  as  his  experience  widens  and 
his  insight  deepens,  horror  and  despair  rise  within  him, 
until  he,  the  man  gifted  with  unerring  intuition,  cries,  *'  0 
God !  take  back  Thy  gift,  and  leave  me  a  short-sighted 
but  happy  man  1  " 

Now  Jesus  alone  of  men  had  this  intuitive  faculty. 
*''  He  knew  what  was  in  man."  Man  was  as  "  naked  and 
open "  to  His  eye  as  to  God's.  And  He  knew  human 
sin  too — what  it  could  and  what  it  would  do.  The  man 
He  loved,  the  sin  He  hated  ;  yet  day  by  day  He  saw  the 
hated  sin  ruining  the  loved  man.  He  stood  on  earth  too, 
yearning  in  every  fibre  of  His  being  with  the  desire  to 
save,  bleeding  in  every  pore  of  His  heart  with  pity  for 
the  lost ;  yet  past  Him  those  lost  men  went,  hurrying, 
trampling  each  other  in  their  mad  haste  to  be  ruined. 
Sin  too,  in  the  very  extravagance  of  insult,  turned  on 
Him,  plying  Him  with  manifold  subtle  temptations.  He 
had  come  to  destroy  it :  it  transcended  its  former  self  by 
17 


250  STUDIES  IN  THE  LITE  OF  CHRIST. 

attempting  to  destroy  Him.  Day  by  day  the  wickedness 
He  loathed  unutterably  pressed  against  His  heart,  stood 
in  His  path,  breathed  in  His  face,  touched  His  limbs, 
rose  round  Him  like  a  brazen  bulwark,  which  seemed 
gradually  to  narrow  till  it  threatened  to  shut  Him  in.  Ah! 
there  He  was,  sin  everywhere  and  in  every  one  on  earth 
save  Him  alone,  and  it,  wrathful  at  being  excluded, 
storming  every  avenue,  mustering  its  forces  to  crush,  if  it 
could  not  capture.  Alone  He  was  with  an  awful  loneli- 
ness, yet  not  alone,  for  the  Father  was  with  Him.  We 
can  see  but  a  little  way  into  the  suffering  that  was  there ; 
but  a  little  way,  too,  into  the  strength  and  joy  that  came 
from  the  hands  and  face  of  the  Father. 

Jesus  suffered  then — could  not  but  suffer.  Significant 
was  that  silent  lowly  advent  of  His,  stepping  so  quietly 
across  the  threshold  of  the  world  into  the  manger  of 
Bethlehem.  Not  as  emperor,  not  as  priest,  not  as  scribe, 
but  as  peasant,  or  rather  simple  unadorned  man,  exposed 
to  all  the  hardships  and  pains  of  poverty,  had  the  "Man 
of  Sorrows'*  to  travel  through  His  life.  The  Father 
did  not  annul  ifor  the  Son  the  old  curse  of  labour;  even 
this  He  bore.  The  moment  the  Divine  Boy  realized  His 
Father's  business,  He  realized  His  own  sorrow ;  bread  to 
earn,  yet  men  to  save;  a  mother  to  support,  yet  a  world 
to  redeein  ;  around  Him  the  wants  and  claims  of  day, 
away  before  Him  the  work  He  had  come  to  do.  And  how 
that  work  foreseen,  therefore  forefelt,  must  have  added  to 
His  sufferings,  pressed  its  burden  upon  that  heart,  which 
alone  knew  perfectly  how  to  "  take  no  thought  for  the 
morrow,"  till  even  He  exclaimed,  *'I  have  a  baptism  to 
be  baptized  with ;  and  how  am  I  straitened  till  it  be 
accomplished  !  "  Thou  Divine  Sufferer,  bearer  of  the 
world's  sorrow,  we  thank  Thee  that  Thou  hast  shown  its 
Divine  necessity — that  he  who  would  in  a  sinful  world 
be  sinless  must  be  that  world's  outcast  and  supreme  suf- 


GETIISEMANE,  251 

ferer.  Teach  us  to  be  like  Thee  in  spirit,  though  its 
price  be  a  sorrow  like  Thine ;  to  have  "  the  fellowship 
of  Thy  sufferings,"  and  to  be  "  made  conformable  to 
Thy  death." 

And  sorrow  had  a  great  function  in  the  life  and  spirit 
of  Christ.  By  His  sufferings  He,  "  though  a  Son, 
learned  obedience."  There  is  no  implied  antithesis  to 
former  disobedience.  He  who  was  "without  sin"  had  never 
to  unlearn,  only  to  learn.  His  humanity,  while  at  first 
equipped ,  with  everything  that  was  native  to  man,  had 
to  acquire  whatever  was  acquirable.  God  creates  m  m 
innocent,  not  obedient  or  disobedient;  whether  he  shall 
be  the  one  or  the  other,  man  himself  must  determine. 
Jesus  was  born  as  man  is  born,  with  human  capacities 
and  tendencies  in  Him,  a  moral  character  possible,  not 
actual.  His  relation  to  law  had  been  determined  by  His 
own  will.  His  obedience  began  with  His  first  conscious 
choice ;  and  while  perfect  as  a  child's  obedience,  could 
only  be  held  as  such,  not  as  a  man's.  As  man  reaches 
his  perfection  in  manhood,  so  manhood  can  alone  render 
human  obedience  in  its  perfection.  As  it  has  a  phase 
corresponding  to  each  phase  of  life,  so  man  has  to  learn 
as  child,  or  boy,  or  youth,  or  man,  an  obedience  suited 
to  each  period.  Childhood  hands  over  to  boyhood  a 
character  which  boyhood  must  develop,  amidst  its  frolic 
and  struggle,  towards  either  evil  or  good.  Youth  receives 
the  moral  results  of  boyhood,  adds  to  them  its  own,  and 
then  hands  on  the  work  to  manhood  to  complete,  to  be 
either  made  or  marred.  So  the  obedience  of  Jesus  pro- 
gressed through  these  successive  stages,  and  in  each  stage 
He  had  to  "learn  "  it  by  "  the  things  which  He  suffered." 
Here  lay  the  worth  and  meaning  of  His  sorrow :  it  was 
His  great  educator.  He  went  into  it  the  one  sinless  child; 
He  came  out  of  it  the  one  obedient  man.  He  entered 
its  school  only  innocent;    He  left  it  perfectly  righteouti. 


252  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

While  He  could  not  have  suffered  as  He  did  apart  from 
His  sinlessness,  He  could  not  have  "  learned  obedience  " 
apart  from  His  sufferings. 

But  these  general  considerations  are  significant  here 
only  as  they  help  us  to  understand  the  dark  hour  in 
Gethsemane.  They  show  us  not  only  that  sorrow  was 
inevitable  to  Christ,  but  also  the  kind  and  quality  of  this 
inevitable  sorrow.  It  was  without  sin,  yet  due  to  sin — 
the  sorrow  of  the  Sinless  in  presence  of  the  sinful. 
Holiness  is  happiness  only  where  all  are  holy;  it  is  and 
must  be  suffering  where  all  beside  are  evil.  The  agony 
for  sin  will  be  in  proportion  to  the  absence  of  sin  in 
the  sufferer.  And  this  truth  received  its  most  awful 
exemplification  in  Gethsemane.  The  sorrow  there  did  not 
proceed  from  God.  The  filial  trust  of  the  Saviour  was 
absolute.  He  entered  His  agony  with  the  serene  con- 
sciousness that  when  His  loneliness  was  deepest  His 
Father  would  be  with  Him ;  ^  He  issued  from  it  with 
a  cry  of  the  most  perfect  and  even  passionate  con- 
fidence in  His  loving  presence  and  helpful  will.^  And 
midway  between  those  points,  in  the  black  centre,  where 
He  wrestled  with  His  agony  as  Jacob  had  wrestled  with 
God,  the  name  that  rose  to  His  lips,  as  the  drops  of 
blood  stood  out  on  His  brow,  was  still  "  Father."  3  And 
the  thing  asked  and  the  manner  of  the  asking  showed 
the  spirit  of  the  Son  :  ''  If  it  be  possible,"  '*  if  Thou  be 
willing,"  "  let  this  cup  pass."  The  confidence  and  the 
obedience  were  alike  absolute ;  as  if  He  had  said, 
"  Whatsoever  Thy  will  may  be,  I  trust  and  obey."  He 
had  no  consciousness  of  Divine  anger,  of  a  face  hidden, 
or  love  withdrawn;  only  of  a  "cup"  the  spirit  was 
willing  but  the  flesh  too  weak  to  drink.  What  this  "cup" 
was  is  plain  enough.     The  ideas   and    language   of  the 

*  John  xvi.  32.  2  Luke  xxiii.  46. 

3  Matt.  xxvi.  42  ;  Luke  xxii.  42. 


GETHSEMANE.  253 

supper  were  still  in  His  mind.  He  was  thinking  of  **  the 
cup  of  the  New  Testament  in  My  blood."  It  was  His 
death  as  a  sacrifice,  His  shedding  of  His  blood  "  for  the 
many,  for  the  remission  of  sins."  '  The  thought  of  this 
death  had  been  for  long  His  daily  companion.  He  had  first 
spoken  of  it  at  Csesarea  Philippi,^  and  had  never  ceased  to 
speak  of  it  since.  As  it  approached  Him,  it  deepened 
the  shadow  on  His  spirit,  touched  it  with  a  heavier 
sadness.  It  was  "  the  cup  "  He  told  the  sons  of  Zebedee 
He  must  drink,  the  death  He  must  go  to  Jerusalem  to 
suffer.  And  now  that  the  end  has  come,  it  seems  too  awful; 
as  He  faces  it  there  is  forced  from  Him  the  prayer, 
** Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let  it  pass." 

Now  why  should  Christ  so  fear  death,  a  death  He 
had  throughout  anticipated  and  foretold?  This  great 
horror  seems  a  mysterious  thing.  Christ  had  for  Him- 
self nothing  to  fear.  Conscience  makes  a  coward  only 
where  there  is  guilt,  not  where  there  is  holiness.  Jesus 
did  not  know  the  remorse  that  feels  the  future  terrible; 
only  the  filial  love  that  yearns  for  rest  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father.  Man  had  been  cruel,  God  gracious ;  and  by 
death  He  could  escape  from  angry  man  to  gentle  God. 
But  it  was  not  the  issues  from  death  Christ  feared ;  it 
was  the  way  into  it,  the  drinking  of  the  cup.  He  was  in 
a  great  terror,  not  at  what  was  personal,  but  at  what 
was  universal  in  death  —  what  it  involved  and  signified 
as  to  man,  not  what  it  involved  and  signified  as  to  Him- 
self. His  death  was  to  be,  in  a  sense,  the  victory  of  sin 
— its  victory  not  over  Him,  but  over  His  life.  The  spirit 
that  was  willing  it  could  not  vanquish,  but  the  flesh  that 
was  weak  it  did.  Yet  in  vanquishing  the  flesh  it  was 
vanquished  by  the  spirit.  Christ  was  obedient  unto 
death,  and  death,  in  overcoming  the  life,  did  not  over- 
come the  will,  was  rather  overcome  by  it.  He  sur- 
'  Matt.  xxvi.  28  ;  Luke  xxii.  20.      2  Matt.  xvi.  21  ;  Mark  viii.  31. 


254  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIEE  OF  CHRIST 

rendered  His  life,  but  held  fast  His  obedience ;  gave 
Himself  up  to  death,  but  maintained  His  holiness,  His 
service  of  law  and  love.  But  in  the  conflict  that  ended 
in  these  most  opposite  victories — of  sin  over  His  life,  of 
His  will  over  sin — His  spirit  and  sin  stood  face  to  face, 
and  knew  each  other  as  they  had  never  done  before. 
And  the  knowledge  involved  struggle,  agony,  sorrow 
unto  death.  Christ  died  on  the  cross,  but  not  by  the 
cross.  He  died  for  sin  and  by  sin,  His  heart  broken, 
but  His  will  strong,  inflexible,  holy. 

How  and  why  this  fatal  yet  victorious  conflict  with  sin 
should  fill  Christ  with  so  great  and  unspeakable  horror 
we  must  now,  though  only  in  the  dimmest  way,  attempt 
to  see.  His  sufferings  might  be  said  to  be  of  two  kinds — 
the  necessary  and  contingent,  the  general  and  the  special; 
or  those  essential  to  His  very  nature  and  mission,  and 
those  springing  out  of  His  history  and  historical  relations. 
The  necessary  were,  in  a  sense,  abstract  and  universal — 
the  sufferings  of  a  holy  person  obedient,  under  the  limita- 
tions essential  to  a  creature,  and  within  the  conditions 
afforded  by  a  sinful  world,  to  the  will  that  made  and  sent 
and  ruled  Him ;  but  the  contingent  were,  in  a  sense, 
concrete  and  particular — the  sufferings  of  a  pure  and 
gracious  spirit,  deserted,  hated,  betrayed,  crucified,  by 
the  men  He  loved  and  was  dying  to  save.  The  necessary 
were,  while  real  and  essential  sufferings,  transformed  and 
glorified  by  the  end,  "  the  joy  that  was  set  before  Him  ;  " 
but  the  contingent  were,  while  concrete  and  historical, 
an  unrelieved  agony,  a  darkness  touched  by  no  ray  of 
light  from  a  higher  and  diviner  world.  The  former  give 
to  Christ's  work  its  peculiar  character  and  worth,  and  so 
concern  theology ;  but  the  latter  make  Him  *'  the  Man  of 
Sorrows,"  explain  at  once  His  attitude  in  Gethsemane 
and  His  bearing  on  the  cross,  and  so  concern  history. 
The  necessary  sufferings  are  intelligible  only  to  those  who 


GETHSEMANE.  255 

study  Christ  as  Paul  and  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  studied  Him  ;  but  the  contingent  are  intel- 
ligible to  those  who  seek  to  know  Him  as  He  is  presented 
in  the  Gospels,  as  He  lived  in  history  and  among  men. 

Yet  it  is  necessary  to  note  in  what  sense  the  word  con- 
tingent is  here  used.  The  sufferings  so  named  were,  in 
a  sense,  necessary :  when  holiness  like  His  confronted 
sin  like  man's,  sorrow  that  became  intensest  suffering 
was,  as  we  have  seen,  inevitable.  But  the  sufferings  so 
endured  did  not  belong  to  the  essence  of  His  work — were, 
let  us  rather  say,  accessories,  almost  accidents.  His 
death  did  not  depend  for  its  worth  on,  was  not  constituted  a 
sacrifice  by,  the  human  crime  and  passion  that  gathered 
round  it,  and  deepened  its  agony  and  shame.  It  had 
been  as  precious  in  the  sight  of  God,  as  glorious  in  its 
issues  for  man,  as  it  now  is,  even  though  the  scenes  of 
treachery,  malice,  hatred,  obstinate  vacillation,  and  in- 
flexible revenge  that  did  surround  it  had  never  been. 
Judas  and  Caiaphas,  Herod  and  Pilate,  the  rabble  rout  that 
did  not  forbear  their  shouting  even  at  the  cross,  were  not 
partakers  in  the  work  of  Christ,  as  essential  to  it  as  Him- 
self. Though  they  were  not  necessary  to  it,  they  were 
sources  of  sorrow,  centres  charged  with  agony,  for  Him. 
The  vision  that  in  Gethsemane  and  on  the  cross  stood 
clear  before  His  soul,  we  can  but  dimly  imagine.  Judas 
the  disciple,  a  loved,  trusted,  familiar  friend,  become  an 
apostate,  now  urged  by  passion  into  treason,  now  con- 
sumed and  pursued  by  the  furies  of  remorse,  then  a 
fugitive  from  conscience,  seeking  by  the  flight  from  time 
into  eternity  to  escape  from  himself;  Caiaphas  the  high 
priest,  representative  of  an  ancient  people,  head  of  their 
worship,  symbol  of  their  faith,  prostituting  his  sacred 
office,  using  noblest  opportunities  for  worst  ends ;  Pilate, 
upholder  of  law  and  order,  consenting  to  do  a  wrong  to 
please  the  multitude— administrator  of  justice,  yet,  in  deep 


256  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

disdain  of  the  clamour  and  its  cause,  surrendering  inno- 
cence to  vengeance ;  the  people,  suddenly  swerving  from 
the  enthusiasm  of  hope  to  the  fanaticism  of  hate,  athirst 
for  blood,  renouncing  their  splendid  inheritance,  denying 
their  very  Messiah,  and  demanding  the  death  that  is  to 
be  their  dispersion  and  enduring  shame — these  and  similar 
forms,  with  all  their  dreadful  doings  and  surroundings, 
pass  in  a  vision  more  terrible  than  reality  before  the  eye 
of  Christ.  These  men,  with  all  their  passions  and  guilt, 
seemed  to  encircle  Him,  to  belong  to  Him,  to  mix  them- 
selves up  inextricably  with  His  work,  to  create  and  cause 
the  death  that  was  to  be  His  glory  and  their  shame.  And 
He  might  well  feel  as  if  to  go  forward  to  His  death  were 
to  consent  to  their  crime.  He  had  come  to  be  their 
redemption,  but  His  very  act  of  sacrifice  was  to  be  a  most 
calamitous  judgment.  He  had  come  to  save,  but  His 
mercy  was  to  be  to  them  in  its  issues  severer  than  the 
severest  justice.  And  so  it  seemed  as  if  into  His  very  cup 
their  crimes  had  been  pressed,  as  if  the  very  wine  He  had 
to  drink  were  dark  with  their  blood.  It  looked  as  if  He 
had  become  the  victim  of  the  most  dreadful  irony  that 
even  Providence  could  indulge  ;  His  acts  of  divinest  grace 
made  the  condition  and  occasion  of  man's  most  utter  and 
unspeakable  sin.  And  so  His  soul  stood,  as  it  were, 
clothed  in  horror  before  a  sacrifice  so  conditioned,  a  death 
so  prepared  and  attended.  It  was  almost  more  than  even 
His  will  could  do  or  endure  ;  and  the  feeling,  making  Him 
irresolute  in  the  very  moment  of  His  highest  resolution, 
forced  from  Him  the  cry,  *'  Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let 
this  cup  pass."  Yet  the  will  seemed  only  to  waver  that 
it  might  settle  the  more  fixedly  in  its  purpose  to  obey. 
*'  Nevertheless,  not  as  I  will,  but  as  Thou  wilt.*'  The 
obedience  was  absolute  ;  the  worst  of  evils  could  be 
suffered  that  the  will  of  God  might  be  done. 

And  these  contingent  sufferings  were  not  aimless ;    they 


GETHSEMANE,  257 

contributed  to  the  perfection  of  the  Sufferer,  to  the 
efficiency  and  value  of  His  work.  They  revealed  sin  to 
Christ  and  man,  showed  the  excellence  of  Hi§  righteous- 
ness and  the  misery  of  our  guilt.  The  death  of  Christ, 
with  all  its  evil  pomp  and  circumstance,  may  be  said  to 
have  created  in  humanity  the  consciousness  of  sin.  After 
it  the  seemly  and  shameless  naturalism  of  Greece,  the 
indulgent  and  lascivious  worships  of  Syra  and  Egypt,  the 
unethical  beliefs  and  immoral  religious  practices  of  India, 
became  abhorrent  to  the  conscience  of  the  world,  lay 
before  the  spirit  naked,  defiled,  unclean.  Religions  that 
were  blind  to  sin,  that  trifled  with  it,  were  no  religions  for 
man.  Evil  was  now  a  dreadful  reality  that  must  be  con- 
quered, if  He  was  to  remain  human,  and  realize  the  image 
of  God.  And  the  sufferings  that  so  revealed  sin  to  man 
were,  in  the  truest  sense,  redemptive.  Sin  once  seen  in 
its  exceeding  sinfulness  is  sin  abhorred,  renounced.  The 
evil  personified  in  Judas  and  Caiaphas,  in  Pilate  and 
Herod,  in  the  priests  and  the  multitude,  is  evil  man  no 
more  can  love,  just  as  the  holy  and  beautiful  righteous- 
ness incarnated  in  Christ  is  righteousness  he  no  more  can 
hate,  but  must  ever  admire  and  follow  after  with  a  Divine 
enthusiasm.  And  so  the  will  that  required  Jesus  to  drink 
the  awful  cup  was  a  beneficent  Will — purposed  that  the 
One  should  suffer  that  the  many  might  be  saved.  For  the 
suffering  that  revealed  man's  sin  perfected  man's  Saviour. 
*'  Though  He  were  a  Son,  yet  learned  He  obedience  by 
the  things  that  He  suffered ;  and  having  been  made  per- 
fect. He  became  the  Author  of  eternal  salvation  to  all 
them  that  obey  Him."  "  Inasm.uch  as  He  suffered.  He 
Himself  having  been  tempted,  He  is  able  to  succour  them 
that  are  tempted.** 


XV. 

THE  BETRA  YER, 

There  is  nothing  more  remarkable  in  the  history  of  the 
Passion  than  its  moral  truthfulness,  the  extraordinary 
realism  with  which  the  varied  and  most  dissimilar  cha- 
racters are  painted.  The  men  live  and  act  before  us 
obedient  to  their  respective  natures  and  ends.  Each  has 
his  own  character,  and  the  history  but  exhibits  it  in  action, 
articulated  in  speech  and  conduct.  There  is  everywhere 
the  finest  consistency  between  the  doer  and  the  deed  ;  new 
events  but  make  us  the  more  conscious  of  the  harmony. 
And  this  harmony  is  exhibited  and  preserved  under  the 
most  extraordinary  conditions,  and  ifi  what  seems  most 
violent  combinations.  The  central  figure  is  the  holiest 
Person  of  history,  but  round  Him  stand  or  strive  the  most 
opposed  and  contrasted  moral  types,  every  one  related  to 
Him  and  more  or  less  concerned  in  the  tragic  action  of 
which  He  is  at  once  object  and  victim.  The  characters 
and  catastrophe  are  alike  beyond  and  above  all  the  con- 
ventional ideals,  whether  of  history  or  traged}^  The  Christ 
Himself  is  a  wonderful  picture.  Jesus  appears  in  every 
moment  and  circumstance  equal  to  Himself.  To  paint 
Him  as  He  lives  before  us  in  His  final  agony,  was  a  feat 
possible  only  to  the  sweet  simplicity  that  copi'es  Nature, 
unconscious  oi  its  own  high  art.  It  was -a  work  beyond 
not  only  the  Galilean  imagination,  but  any  of  the  imagina- 
tions that  had  as  yet  created  the  ideals  of  the  world. 
Physical  weakness  and  suffering  do  not  readily  lend  them- 


THE  BETRAYER.  259 

selves  to  the  expression  of  moral  dignity  and  power.  The 
Victim  of  the  scourge  and  the  cross,  fated  to  endure  the 
contemptuous  pity  of  His  judge  and  the  merciljsss  mockery 
of  His  foes,  is  hardly  the  kind  of  subject  imagination  would 
choose  as  the  vehicle  or  embodiment  of  a  spiritual  sublimity 
so  transcendent  as  to  demand  our  worship  and  command 
our  awe.  Creative  art  would  find  it  almost,  perhaps  alto- 
gether, impossible  to  keep  the  weakness  from  depraving 
and  so  destroying  the  dignity — the  scornful  hate  that  kills 
the  person  from  casting  its  shadow  over  the  character.  It 
is  only  when  we  compare  this  simple  historical  presentation 
with  the  highest  human  art  that  we  see  how  perfect  it  is. 
The  splendid  imagination  of  Plato  has  done  its  utmost  to 
invest  the  death  of  Sokrates  with  high  philosophical 
meaning,  with  the  deepest  ethical  and  tragic  interest. 
Yet  when  the  closing  scenes  in  the  PhcBdo  are  compared 
with  the  closing  scenes  in  the  Gospels,  how  utterly  the 
finest  genius  of  Greece  is  seen  to  have  failed  in  his  picture 
of  the  good  man  in  death.  Sokrates  is  the  philosopher, 
not  the  man.  In  his  very  serenity  there  is  something 
selfish.  His  speculations  calm  and  exalt  him,  but  at  the 
expense  of  his  humanity.  Affection,  passion  does  not 
trouble  him,  and  he  does  not  feel  how  sorely  it  may  trouble 
other  and  lower  spirits.  Death,  so  far  as  an  evil  to  himself, 
he  has  conquered;  but  he  has  not  even  imagined  that  his 
death  may  be  an  evil  to  others,  all  the  greater  that  he 
suffers  it  so  unjustly  and  meets  it  so  serenely.  The  guilt 
of  Athens  in  causing  his  death  does  not  touch  so  as  to  awe 
or  overwhelm  him  ;  he  feels  the  guilt  almost  as  little  as 
Athens  herself.  Then  the  sorrows  of  Xanthippe  do  not 
move  him.  He  remains  sublimely  discoursing  with  his 
friends,  while  she,  face  to  face  with  woman's  greatest 
sorrow,  is  introduced  only  to  be  made  ridiculous  in  her 
grief.  Xanthippe  indeed  has  been  one  of  the  most  ill-used 
of  women.     Neglected  by  her  husband  in  life,  she  is  not 


26o  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

comforted  b}^  him  in  death.  He  has  lofty  principles  and 
wise  speeches  for  philosophers,  but  only  scornful  pity  of 
the  woman  whose  sorrow  ought  to  have  touched  his  spirit 
and  made  him  feel  that  death  is  more  terrible  to  the  living 
than  to  the  dying,  and  that  the  sorrows  of  affection  have  a 
greater  claim  on  our  comfort  and  sympathy  than  the  serene 
souls  of  philosophers.  How  infinitely  does  Christ  in  His 
dying  passion  transcend  the  most  virtuous  of  the  Greeks ! 
Death  to  Him  has  no  terrors,  save  those  made  by  the  guilt 
of  man.  He  fears  death  for  the  sake  of  the  men  that  work 
it ;  because  of  their  sin  it  is  to  Him  an  agony  He  cannot 
bear.  -  The  man  who  followed  and  betrayed  Him,  the  men 
who  loved  and  forsook  Him,  the  women  who  loved  and 
forsook  Him  not.  He  pitied,  He  comforted  as  far  as  they 
would  receive  the  comfort  He  had  to  give.  The  sorrow  of 
Christ  in  death  was  diviner  than  the  serenity  of  Sokrates, 
and  the  historians  of  His  sorrow  could  have  made  Him  so 
seem  only  by  painting  Him  as  He  was.  They  were  with- 
out the  imagination  that  could  create  an  ideal  so  strange 
yet  so  beautiful,  and  only  possessed  the  love  that  is  quick 
to  understand  and  sure  and  true  of  speech.  And  thus,  by 
their  very  openness  and  simplicity  of  soul,  which  keeps 
them  remote  from  invention  and  near  to  reality,  they  so 
represent  Christ  in  His  passion  as  to  make  the  passion 
exalt  and  glorify  the  Christ.  But  the  transfiguring  power 
is  in  the  person,  not  in  the  suffering.  It  is  made  sublime 
through  Him  ;  He  remains  glorious  in  spite  of  it.  The  case 
is  without  a  parallel.  There  are  no  sufferings  in  the  world 
that  awaken  the  same  emotions  as  Christ's ;  but  the 
emotions  they  awaken  are  due  not  to  them  as  sufferings, 
but  to  the  Sufferer.  Their  transcendent  significance  only 
expresses  His  ;  and  the  degree  of  their  significance  for 
the  world  is  the  measure  of  the  wonderful  unlearned  art 
that  had  the  v/isdom  to  read  their  meaning  and  tell  their 
story. 


THE  BETRAYER.  261 

And  as  Christ  remains  Himself,  true  to  His  ideal 
character,  the  other  actors  in  the  tragedy  no  less  faith- 
fully and  consistently  unfold  in  action  and  conduct  their 
respective  moral  natures.  While  He  rises 'above  His 
sorrow^,  and  commands  it,  even  in  the  very  moment  when 
it  works  His  death.  His  disciples  behave  like  simple  men 
surprised  in  the  midst  of  fond  illusions,  suddenly  and 
fiercely  shaken  out  of  them,  and  too  completely  bewildered 
by  the  shock  to  know  what  to  think  or  to  do.  Judas, 
perhaps  the  man  of  strongest  character  and  will  in  the 
band,  foresees  the  catastrophe,  contributes  to  it,  but  only 
to  be  so  appalled  by  the  issue  as  to  be  hurried  to  a  deed  of 
terrible  atonement.  And  this  evolution  of  moral  nature 
and  principle  stands  in  radical  relation  to  the  presence  and 
action  of  the  Christ.  The  men  who  touch  Him  in  this 
supreme  hour  of  His  history  do  so  only  to  have  their  es- 
sential characters  disclosed.  In  Him  judgment  so  lived 
that  it  acted  as  by  nature  and  without  ceasing.  The  men 
who  thought  to  try  Him  were  themselves  tried,  stood  in 
His  presence  with  their  inmost  secrets  turned  out.  The 
stars  that  look  down  on  us  like  the  radiant  eyes  of  heaven 
shine  out  of  a  darkness  their  light  but  deepens.  The  sun- 
shine makes  the  plant  unfold  its  leaves,  the  flower  declare 
its  colour,  the  tree  exhibit  its  fruit.  So  from  Christ  there 
came  the  light  as  of  a  solitary  star,  deepening  the  darkness 
round  Him,  a  heat  and  radiance  that  made  the  characters 
about  Him  effloresce  and  bear  fruit,  each  after  its  kind. 
The  high  priest  is  made  all  unconsciously  to  himself  to 
show  himself,  not  as  he  thought  he  was  or  would  like  to  be 
thought  to  be,  but  as  he  is  before  the  eye  of  God  and 
measured  by  the  eternal  law  of  righteousness — crafty,  de- 
voted to  expediency,  using  his  high  office  for  private  ends, 
turning  the  forms  of  justice  into  the  instruments  of  injus- 
tice ;  scrupulous  as  to  ceremonial  purity,  but  heedless  as  tu 
moral  rectitude ;  able  red-handed  but  calm-hearted  to  keep 


-562  STUDIES  IN  TEE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

the  Passover,  feeling  in  no  way  disqualified  by  his  part  in 
the  trial  and  crucifixion  for  celebrating  the  great  religious 
festival  of  his  people.  The  Procurator,  a  Roman,  im- 
perious, haughty,  scornful  of  the  people  he  ruled,  con- 
temptuous of  their  religion,  impatient  of  their  ceaseless 
disputes,  stands,  from  his  brief  connection  with  Jesus, 
before  all  time  morally  unveiled — a  man  vacillating,  cruel, 
as  a  judge  in  the  heart  of  him  unjust,  surrendering  to  a 
popular  clamour  he  proudly  despised  the  very  person  he 
had  declared  innocent.  The  priests,  fearful  of  pollution, 
hating  a  Gentile  as  if  he  were  organized  sin,  are  seen,  as 
it  were,  spiritually  unclothed,  sacrificing  their  hitherto 
greatest  to  a  still  greater  hate,  stimulating  in  the  crowd 
their  thirst  for  blood,  preferring  Csesar  to  Christ,  standing 
mocking  and  spiteful  before  painful  yet  sacred  death. 
The  people,  thoughtless,  impulsive,  are  shown,  the  ready 
tools  of  the  cunning,  demanding  the  life  of  a  murderer,  the 
death  of  the  righteous;  as  a  multitude,  where  men,  de-in- 
dividuated, are  almost  de-humanized,  capable  of  atrocities 
which  each  man  apart  and  by  himself  would  abhor  himself 
for  thinking  either  he  or  any  other  man  could  perpetrate. 
The  inner  nature  in  each  determines  the  action,  but  the 
contact  with  Christ  shows  the  quality  of  the  nature,  and 
forces  it  into  appropriate  action  and  speech.  As  the 
Passion  reveals  in  Jesus  the  Christ,  its  history  is  but  the 
translation,  under  the  impulse  He  supplies,  into  word  and 
deed,  of  the  spirit  of  the  men  who  surrounded,  tried,  and 
crucified  Him. 

Now  this  indicates  the  point  of  view  from  which  we  wish 
to  apprehend  the  last  events  in  the  life  of  Christ.  They 
are  the  revelation  of  very  varied  moral  natures,  and  they 
possess  a  singular  unity  and  significance  when  studied  in 
relation  to  the  natures  they  reveal.  The  standpoint  is 
critical,  but  psychological  rather  than  historical,  the 
criticism  being  concerned  not  so  much  with  the  probable 


THE  BETRAYER.  263 

order  and  outer  conditions  of  the  events  as  with  their  moral 
source  and  spiritual  sequence.  If  we  can  find  their  subtler 
inner  relations — can,  as  it  were,  interpret  the  drama 
through  the  actors,  or  the  plot  through  the  characters, 
especially  in  their  attitude  to  Him  whose  presence  gives 
unity  and  movement  to  the  wholes-it  may  help  us  the 
better  not  only  to  understand  its  truth,  but  to  believe  its 
reality. 

The  first  man  who  meets  us  is  the  man  who  led  the 
band  of  captors  to  Gethsemane.  Judas  is  one  of  the 
standing  moral  problems  of  the  gospel  history.  What 
was  the  character  of  the  man  ?  What  motives  induced 
him  first  to  seek  and  then  to  forsake  the  society  of  Jesus  ? 
Why  did  he  turn  traitor  ?  Why  was  he  so  little  penetrated 
by  the  Spirit  and  awed  by  the  authority  of  Christ  as  to  be 
able  to  do  as  he  did  ?  And  why,  having  done  it,  did  he  so 
swiftly  and  tragically  avenge  on  himself  his  deliberately 
planned  and  executed  crime  ?  These  questions  invest  the 
man  with  a  fascination  now  of  horror  and  again  of  pity  ;  of 
horror  at  the  crime,  of  pity  for  the  man.  If  his  deed  stands 
alone  among  the  evil  deeds  of  the  world,  so  does  his  re- 
morse among  the  acts  and  atonements  of  conscience  ;  and 
the  remorse  is  more  expressive  of  the  man  than  even  the 
deed.  Lavater  said,  "  Judas  acted  like  Satan,  but  like  a 
Satan  who  had  it  in  him  to  be  an  apostle."  And  it  is  this 
evolution  of  a  possible  apostle  into  an  actual  Satan  that  is 
at  once  so  touching  and  so  tragic. 

There  is  an  instructive  contrast  between  what  we  know 
of  the  man  and  how  we  conceive  him.  There  is,  perhaps, 
no  person  in  history  of  whom  we  at  once  know  so  little 
and  have  so  distinct  an  image.  The  lines  that  sketch  him 
are  few,  but  they  are  lines  of  living  fire.  He  is  too  real  a 
person  to  be,  as  Strauss  argued,  ^  a  mythical  creation, 
made  after  Ahithophel,  and  draped  in  a  history  suggested 
*  Leben  Jesu,  §  130 ;  Neues  Leben^  %  90. 


264  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

by  verses  in  the  very  Psalms  Peter  quoted  in  his  address 
to  his  brother  Apostles. '  The  man  and  his  part  are  so 
interwoven  with  the  history  of  Christ's  last  days  as  to  be 
inseparable  from  it ;  the  picture  of  the  man  is  too  defined, 
concrete,  characteristic  to  be  a  product  of  the  mythical 
imagination,  which,  always  exaggerative,  never  works  but 
on  a  stupendous  scale.  The  objects  loom  as  through  the 
mist — do  not  look  like  Judas,  clear  and  sharp-cut  as  if 
fresh  from  the  sculptor's  chisel.  Still  less  can  we  allow 
Volkmar^  to  resolve  him  into  a  creation  of  the  Pauline 
tendency,  framed  expressly  to  make  a  place  in  the  apos- 
tolic circle  for  Paul.  His  reasons  are  as  violent  as  his 
conjecture.  Judas  is  no  bestial  phenomenon,  lying  outside 
the  pale  of  humanity.  On  the  contrary,  the  human  nature 
of  him  is  terribly  real  and  distinct ;  and  Paul's  own 
reference  to  the  betrayal  ^  is,  notwithstanding  Volkmar's 
specious  exegesis  and  strained  rendering,  clear  and  con- 
clusive. But  if  the  critic  is  required  to  spare  his  historical 
reality,  it  is  not  simply  in  order  to  allow  the  speculative 
theologian  to  destroy  his  humanity.     Daub/  in  one  of  the 

*  Acts  i,  15,  ff.  ;  Pss.  cix.,  Ixix. 

="  Die  Religion  Jesu  u.  ihre  erste  Eniwickelung  nach  dem  gegen- 
ivdi'tigen  Stande  der  Wissenschafi,  pp.  260,  ff. 

3  I  Cor.  xi.  23.  Volkmar  proposes  to  translate  irapeyihro,  iiberliefert 
wurde  (was  delivered,  given  up),  instead  of  verraihen  ward  (was 
betrayed).  But  the  change  does  not  mend  the  matter.  If  He -was 
delivered,  some  one  delivered  Him  to  somebody,  which  to  the  Apostles 
could  only  appear  as  a  betrayal.  This  whole  theory  as  to  Judas  is  an 
example  of  how  a  scholar,  possessed  by  an  hypothesis,  may  in  its 
interest  do  violence  to  all  the  probabilities  of  history  and  laws  of 
grammar. 

4  Judas  Ischariot^  oder  Betrachhingen  iiber  das  Bdse  im  Verhdltniss 
•J2im  Guten  (Heidelberg,  1 8 1 6, 1 8 1 8).  There  is  no  more  remarkable  figure 
in  modern  theology  than  Daub,  and  no  more  gruesome  book  than 
his  Judas  Ischariot.  He  might  be  said  to  be  the  mirror  of  German 
Transcendentalism  in  its  successive  phases.  He  began  life  a  Kantian, 
he  ended  it  an  Hegelian,  but  was  throughout  distinguished  by  the 
most  heroic  loyalty  to  the  speculative  reason,  addressing  an  audience 


THE  BETRA  YER,  265 

strangest  works  of  his  massive  but  hardly  modern  mind, 
has  conceived  Judas  as  the  embodied  evil  w^ho  stands  in 
antithesis  to  Christ  as  the  embodied  good.  The  one  was 
the  power  of  Satan  in  human  form,  as  the  other  was  the 
power  of  God,  and  without  the  devilish  the  Divine  agent 
could  not  have  accomplished  His  work  in  the  world. 
Hence  Judas  was  chosen  to  be  a  disciple  expressly  that 
he  might  betray  the  Christ,  and  so,  by  enabling  Jesus  to 
fulfil  His  mission,  fulfilling  his  own.  But  this  theory  is 
without  historical  warrant,  its  reason  is  entirely  a  priori, 
its  significance  purely  speculative.  The  man  is  to  us 
simply  an  historical  person,  and  must  be  interpreted  as 
one,  on  principles  and  by  standards  applicable  to  human 
nature  throughout  the  world. 

If  Daub  is  unjust  to  Judas,  sacrificing  his  historical  and 
moral  significance  to  a  speculative  theory  as  to  the  re- 
lation of  evil  to  good,  there  are  two  current,  yet  opposite, 
interpretations  that  are,  though  for  different  reasons,  no 
less  unjust.  According  to  the  one  of  these,  Judas  is  moved 
by  avarice ;  according  to  the  other,  by  mistaken  enthu- 
siasm, by  an  exalted  notion  of  Christ's  mission  and  power. 
There  is  nothing  that  can  so  little  explain  the  act  and 

always  few,  though  not  so  constantly  fit.  When  he  wrote  Judas  he 
was  under  the  influence  of  Schelling's  first  transcendental  theosophy, 
bent  on  discovering  in  God  and  Nature  the  dark  ground  which  the  eternal 
Reason  had  to  conquer,  and  against  which  it  had  to  establish  light 
and  order.  To  him  Jesus  and  Judas  were  the  universe  in  miniature — 
their  history  veiled  the  universal  truth.  "As  Jesus  Christ  had  no  equal 
among  men,  neither  had  His  betrayer.  While  to  the  Christian  mind 
the  first  man  was  the  first  sinner,  yet  among  his  descendants  Judas  is 
the  only  one  in  whom  sin  reached  the  highest  point*'  (vol.  i.  p.  2). 
"  In  him  was  personified  and  concentrated  all  the  wickedness  of  all 
the  enemies  of  Jesus  and  evil  identified  with  its  instrument ;  and  so  for 
him,  as  an  incarnation  of  the  devil,  mercy  and  blessedness  are  alike 
impossible"  (vol.  i.  p.  22).  With  the  way  in  which  Daub  works  out  the 
universal  problem  given  in  this  moment  of  the  evangelical  history,  we 
are  not  here  concerned.  It  is  enough  that  we  see  to  what  extra- 
ordinary uses  Judas  has  been  turned. 
lb 


266  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

conduct  of  Judas  as  greed,  the  love  of  money.  There  is, 
perhaps,  no  passion  more  intense,  but  there  is  certainly 
none  so  narrow,  so  selfish,  so  blind  or  indifferent  to  the 
miseries  or  misfortunes  it  may  inflict  on  others.  To 
avarice  money  is  the  greatest  good,  the  want  of  it  the 
greatest  evil,  and  the  means  that  can  obtain  the  good  and 
obviate  the  evil  are  ever  justified  by  the  end.  The  miser 
who  can  indulge  his  master  passion  minds  his  own 
miseries  too  little  to  care  for  the  miseries  it  may  cause 
either  to  persons  or  States.  The  remorse  of  Judas  dis- 
proves his  greed  ;  the  man  who  could  feel  it  had  too 
much  latent  nobility  of  soul  to  be  an  abject  slave  of 
avarice.  The  "thirty  pieces  of  silver"  had  no  power  to 
comfort  him ;  they  were  the  signs  of  his  guilt,  the  wit- 
nesses of  his  shame,  that  in  his  despair  he  cast  from  him 
in  mingled  rage  and  pain.  The  fact,  too,  that  he  was  the 
bearer  of  the  bag  ^  proves  that  he  was  no  lover  of  money. 
However  his  co-disciples  may  have  judged  him,  Jesus 
would  never  have  so  led  him  into  temptation,  fostered 
avarice  in  the  heart  of  the  avaricious  by  making  him  the 
custodian  of  the  purse.  Christ,  we  may  be  certain,  did 
not  elect  him  to  this  office  in  order  that  He  might  cause 
the  offence  to  come.^ 

And  Judas  was  as  little  a  mistaken  enthusiast,  a  man 
weary  of  his  master's  delay  in  declaring  Himself,  seeking 
by  a  fond  though  foolish  expedient  to  force  Him  to  stand 
forth  the  confessed  and  conquering  Messiah. ^  This  theory 
has  nothing  in  the  history  to  support  it,  is  indeed,  in  every 
respect,  violently  opposed  to  the  evidence.  If  he  had 
been  an  enthusiast,  why  had  his  enthusiasm  slumbered  so 

'  John  xii.  6.  2  Matt,  xviii.  7. 

3  Cf.  the  article  "Judas"  by  Paulus,  in  Ersch  und  ember's  En- 
cyclopddie ;  Whately's  Essays  on  Dangers  to  the  Christian  Faith, 
Discourse  iii.  ;  and  De  Quincey's  celebrated  Essay  on  Judas,  which 
throws  the  same  theory  into  more  literary  but  also  more  paradoxical 
form. 


THE  BE  TRA  YER.  267 

long,  and  never  been  expressed  till  now,  and  why  now  in  a 
form  so  extraordinary  and  fantastic  ?  And  how,  if  he  had 
so  great  an  idea  of  Christ's  power,  had  he  so  mean  an  idea 
of  Christ's  wisdom  ?  If,  too,  he  had  meant  to  compel 
Jesus  to  show  Himself,  would  he  have  chosen  the  silent 
night  as  the  time  for  the  capture  and  still  Gethsemane  as 
the  place  ?  If,  too,  while  his  means  were  so  foolish,  his 
motive  had  been  so  good,  would  Jesus  have  received  and 
spoken  of  and  to  him  as  He  did  ?  The  theory  is  too  unreal 
and  violent  to  deserve  grave  discussion,  and  would  never 
have  been  gravely  proposed  for  belief  save  as  offering  a 
welcome  alternative  to  the  commoner  and  less  generous 
interpretation.  There  are  men  who  but  see  in  the  re- 
morse of  Judas  the  evidence  of  his  sin  and  condemnation ; 
and  there  are  men  who  see  in  it  the  proof  of  a  sorrow  for 
his  act  too  deep  to  allow  the  man  to  forgive  himself.  The 
former  are  contented  to  say :  "  Judas  is  the  one  man  of 
whom  we  know  with  certainty  that  he  is  eternally 
damned  ; "  =  but  the  latter  are  anxious  to  find  some  means 
of  softening  the  fate  of  one  who  died  from  unspeakable 
horror  at  his  own  crime.  Apart  from  this  reason  no  man 
would  ever  have  seen  in  Judas  a  mistaken  enthusiast. 

Let  us  look,  then,  at  the  man  as  he  stands  before  us  in 
history.  It  is  not  easy  indeed  to  get  face  to  face  with  him. 
His  early  life  lies  under  the  shadow  cast  by  his  later;  the 
man  is  interpreted  through  his  end.  And  the  men  who 
interpret  him  for  us  looked  at  him  in  a  light  wonderfully 
unlike  the  light  in  which  he  had  seen  and  been  seen  in  the 
flesh.  To  their  eyes,  enlightened  by  Divine  events,  every- 
thing assumed  a  new  meaning.  Jesus  became  another 
person  than  He  had  been — of  diviner  nature,  higher 
authority,  immenser  significance.  His  kingdom  ceased 
to  be  Israel's  and  became  God's — spiritual,  universal,  eter- 

'  Die  Evangelische  Zeitung^  No.  30,  1863 ;  Hase,  Geschichte  Jesu^ 
p.  549. 


/68  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  01  CHRIST. 

nal;  His  death  was  changed  from  a  last  disaster  into  a 
sacrifice  "  offered  once  for  all,"  abolishing  all  need  of 
further  sacrifices,  and  creating  a  new  and  living  way  by 
which  men  might  draw  near  to  God ;  the  life  of  humilia- 
tion and  suffering  He  had  lived  to  their  senses  was  trans- 
figured and  sublimed  by  the  life  of  exaltation  and  glory  He 
now  lived  to  their  faith.  And  this  change  in  their  notion 
of  Christ  changed  the  proportions  and  meaning  of  every- 
thing that  related  to  Him  or  His  history.  In  the  presence 
of  the  Divine  in  Christ,  acts  of  the  simplest  devotion  were 
touched  with  sublimity,  while  words  of  distrust  or  deeds 
of  disobedience  became  charged  with  a  darker  guilt.  And 
the  new  light  which  had  risen  on  their  spirits  cast  a 
shadow  which  fell  deepest  on  Judas,  stretching  along  the 
whole  course  of  his  life.  The  man  was  to  them  ever  a 
traitor;  in  the  hour  of  his  discipleship  he  had  still  the  soul 
of  an  alien, ^  and  in  his  last  act  he  was  not  so  much  a  man 
as  the  agent  and  organ  of  the  devil.^  But  we  may  be 
certain  that,  whatever  the  man  was  towards  the  end,  he 
could  not  have  been  bad  at  the  beginning.  As  Jesus 
would  never  have  selected  a  man  to  be  a  disciple  for  the 
express  purpose  of  making  him  a  traitor,  Judas  must  have 
had  promise  in  him,  possibilities  of  good,  capabilities  of 
apostleship.  Christ's  act  is  more  significant  than  the 
Evangelist's  words;  and  it  permits  us  to  infer  that  in 
Judas  when  he  was  called  there  was  a  possible  Peter  or 
John,  as,  perhaps,  in  these  there  was  a  possible  Judas. 
There  is  no  question  that  he  was  one  of  the  twelve,^  nor 
that  he  occupied  a  position  of  trust.^  The  man  Christ  so 
trusted  must  have  seemed  to  Him  a  trusty  man,  not  likely 
to  be  corrupted  by  his  office  or  its  opportunities.    But  the 

«  Matt.  X.  4 ;  Mark  iii.  19 ;  Luke  vi.  16. 
'  John  xiii.  2,  27  ;  Luke  xxii.  3. 

3  Matt.  xxvi.  14;  Mark  xiv.  10;  Luke  xxii.  3. 

4  John  xii.  6 ;  xiii.  29. 


THE  BETRAYER,  269 

unlikely  was  the  realized.  He  who  carried  the  purse  be- 
trayed the  Master ;  and  the  well  trusted  became  the  traitor. 
The  position,  then,  from  which  our  constructive  inter- 
pretation must  start  in  this :  Judas  the  disciple  was  a 
possible  apostle,  chosen  to  the  discipleship  that  the  possible 
might  be  realized.  It  was  with  him  as  with  the  others — 
they,  too,  were  possibilities ;  their  souls,  like  his,  the 
battle-ground  of  evil  and  good,  where  the  worse  often  came 
dangerously  near  to  victory.  The  struggle  was  due  to  the 
good  in  Christ  and  the  evil  in  themselves.  The  evil  was 
the  fruit  of  ignorance  or  prejudice  or  passion,  of  the  Judaism 
in  which  they  had  been  nursed,  with  the  false  ideas  it  had 
created,  and  the  false  hopes  it  had  inspired.  Their  ideas 
of  God,  of  the  Messiah,  of  the  kingdom,  of  righteousness, 
of  worship,  of  man,  were  the  very  antitheses  and  contra- 
diction of  Christ's.  His  aim  was  to  lead  them  from  their 
ideas  to  His,  to  expel  the  Jewish  and  plant  in  them  the 
Christian  mind.  At  first  they  loved  Him  because  they  be- 
lieved He  was  the  one  who  could  realize  their  ideals  ;  at  last 
they  loved  Him  because  they  had  made  His  ideals  theirs, 
and  had  by  faith  and  fellowship  been  qualified  to  become 
agents  for  their  realization  throughout  the  world.  But  the 
way  between  the  first  and  the  last  was  long  and  hard  to 
traverse,  marked  here  and  there  by  struggles  fierce  in  pro- 
portion to  the  strength  of  the  old  convictions  and  the  new 
love.  Where  'ffie  convictions  had  the  deepest  root  the 
struggle  was  sternest ;  where  the  love  was  most  intense 
victory  came  earliest  and  was  most  complete.  But  in  no 
case  was  it  easy.  Peter,  the  man  forward  in  speech  and 
action,  could  rebuke  his  Master,  even  after  months  of 
closest  fellowship.^  The  sons  of  Zebedee  could  not  trust 
Him,  but  must  urge  that  He  fulfil  their  ambitions  in  their 
own  form  and  way.^  They  had  not  learned  to  trust  His 
wisdom  because  they  had  not  learned  to  know  His  mind ; 
*  Matt.  xvi.  22  ;  Mark  viii.  32.  *  Mark.  x.  35-37. 


270  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

and  His  mind  was  hard  to  know  because  it  was  so  utterly 
unlike  their  own. 

Now  of  Judas  it  may  certainly  be  said  he  was  at  once 
the  most  Jewish  and  the  least  attached  of  the  disciples, 
the  man  most  pronounced  in  his  Judaism  and  least  bound 
by  his  affections — the  feelings  of  personal  love  and  social 
loyalty  that  could  alone  have  steadied  him  in  the  process 
of  violent  and  distressful  change.  He  was  known  as 
Iscariot  ^ — the  man  from  Kerioth — the  only  Judaean  in  the 
band.  The  others  were  men  of  Galilee,  kindred  in  blood 
and  akin  in  faith.  Galilee  was  the  circle  of  the  Gentiles ; 
in  it  the  people  were  more  mixed,  were  freer,  more  open  to 
new  or  strange  ideas,  less  fierce  and  fanatical  in  their 
Judaism  than  the  people  of  Judaea.  In  the  man  from 
Kerioth  there  lived  the  hotter  temper,  the  haughtier  spirit, 
the  more  intolerant  faith  of  the  south.  The  air  round  his 
home  was  full  of  the  oldest  traditions  of  his  race ;  its  scenes, 
consecrated  by  the  wanderings  and  history  of  Abraham,  by 
the  struggles  and  early  victories  of  David,  may  well  have 
coloured  the  dreams  of  his  youth  and  the  hopes  of  his 
manhood.  Conscious  purity  of  blood  involves  austerity  of 
faith,  and  so  his  ideals  would  be  national  in  a  degree  quite 
unknown  to  the  Galileans.  Learning  Christ  would  be  a 
much  harder  thing  to  him  than  to  them,  for  it  implied  a 
more  radical  revolution.  They  were  alike  in  this — they 
followed  Jesus  at  first  because  they  believed  His  word  and 
mission  to  be  not  hostile  to  Judaism,  but  completory  of  it 
— its  vital  outcome  and  fulfilment.  But  they  were  unlike 
in  their  relation  both  to  Judaism  and  Jesus.  Of  all  it  may 
be  said,  that  the  light  as  it  began  to  break  was  not  alto- 
gether loved,  was  not  always  welcome,  but  even  now  and 
then  positively  hateful.  When  the  new  order  stood  dis- 
closed, it  was  found  so  to  cross  and  contradict  the  inherited 
prejudices  of  generations,  that  only  supreme  love  to  Christ's 
*  Matt.  X.  4 ;  xxvi.  14  ;  Luke  xxii.  3. 


THE  BETRAYER,  271 

person  could  create  and  maintain  loyalty  to  His  aims. 
And  Judas  was  precisely  the  man  who  would  feel  the  con- 
tradiction most  and  the  love  least.  He  had  no  friend  or 
brother  in  the  band  ;  neighbourliness  had  not^  drawn  him 
into  it,  and  family  affection  could  not  help  to  hold  him 
there.  The  solitary  Judsean  in  a  Galilean  society,  he  would 
be,  as  the  least  known,  the  least  loved,  with  fewest  per- 
sonal associations  and  interests,  and  least  community  of 
thought  and  feeling.  Where  friendship,  with  the  confi- 
dences it  brings,  is  not  spontaneous  or  natural,  the  soul  is 
easily  forced  into  the  silence  that  creates  misconception 
and  distrust. 

Let  us  imagine,  then,  the  unwritten  history  of  Judas. 
He  is  a  man  of  strong  convictions,  a  zealot  who  has  in  his 
south  Judsean  home  brooded  over  the  problems  of  his  race, 
the  splendid  spiritual  promise  of  Israel,  but  its  miserable 
historical  failure.  He  believes  in  the  destiny  of  his  people, 
dares  to  confess  to  himself  that,  though  he  pays  tribute  to 
Caesar,  the  Messiah  is  his  king.  Full  of  these  thoughts, 
he  meets  Jesus  at  Jerusalem.  The  one  has  come  south 
from  Nazareth,  the  other  north  from  Kerioth.  It  is  in  the 
Holy  City  that  Judas  most  feels  the  desolation  of  Israel ; 
but  there,  too,  he  is  most  conscious  of  the  consolation  of 
hope.  In  a  moment  of  moody  hopefulness  he  hears  Jesus, 
sees  Him  drive  the  money-changers  out  of  the  temple  ^  and 
do  works  that  seem  to  prove  Him  a  teacher  come  from 
God.^  He  follows  Him,  goes  with  Him  into  Galilee  ;  but 
while  he  believes  that  Jesus  is  the  Messiah,  the  Messianic 
ideal  is^  his  own,  not  Christ's.  He  is  chosen  a  disciple  for 
what  he  may  be  rather  than  what  he  is ;  his  spirit  is  the 
possibility  of  an  apostle  or  an  apostate.  The  early  ministry 
in  Galilee  pleases  him.  In  presence  of  the  miracles,  the 
multitudes,  the  words  of  power,  his  faith  lives.  One  who 
can  so  speak  and  act  may  well  be  the  Messiah,  and  pa- 
■  John  ii.  15.  2  John  ii.  23 ;  iii.  2. 


272  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

tience  is  easy  when  hope  is  strong.  He  is  zealous  in  his 
own  way,  has  a  genius  for  what,  in  modern  phrase,  is 
termed  organization,  and  becomes  purser  of  the  Httle 
band.  He  hears  and,  like  the  others,  dimly  understands 
the  Master,  but  interprets  Him  through  his  own  desires 
and  expectations.  While  the  bright  morning  of  the 
ministry  endures  all  rejoice  in  the  fresh  sunshine;  but 
as  clouds  prophetic  of  storm  gathered  over  its  noonday 
they  did  not  all  alike  feel  the  better  radiance  that  came 
from  the  serene  soul  of  the  Christ.  They  were  like  men 
slowly  awaking  to  a  real  world,  unintelligible  because  so 
unlike  their  ideal — men  bewildered  by  the  consciousness 
that  their  fondest  dreams  were  illusions  destined  never  to 
be  realized.  And  now  came  the  conflict  in  which  love  to 
Christ  and  loyalty  to  the  ancient  convictions,  which  they 
had  hoped  to  see  fulfilled  through  Him,  wrestled  for  the 
mastery.  They  had  to  believe  before  they  could  see,  and 
belief  in  a  moment  so  trying  could  only  live  by  love.  The 
alternatives  were,  assimilation  to  Him  or  recoil  from  Him, 
and  for  a  while  the  rival  forces,  the  centripetal  and  the 
centrifugal,  might  be  so  balanced  as  only  the  more  to  com- 
pel the  man  to  continue  moving  in  the  path  he  had  chosen. 
But  they  could  not  remain  for  ever  in  equilibrium  ;  one  or 
other  must  prevail.  The  consequent  struggle  was  felt  by 
all ;  no  man  escaped  it.  Jesus  was  early  conscious  of  it, 
knew  that  there  was  an  evil  spirit  among  the  twelve,^  one 
who  should  betray  the  Son  of  man  into  the  hands  of  men.^ 
The  prophecies  of  the  Passion  were  a  bewilderment  to  the 
disciples.  Mark,  in  his  picturesque  way,  shows  them 
walking  behind  Jesus  stunned  (iOa/jL^ovvro) ,  stupefied  by 
wonder,  communing  among  themselves,  terrified  at  His 
words  and  the  tragedy  they  foretell.^  The  men  were  all 
differently  affected.     Thomas,  faithful  in  his  very  despair, 

'  John  vi.  70.  *  Matt.  xvii.  22.  3  Mark  x.  32. 


THE  BETRAYER.  273 

was  ready  to  die  with  Him.^  Peter,  more  courageous  in 
speech  than  action,  foretold  his  own  fail  by  boasting  that, 
while  all  men  might  be  offended,  yet  woqjd  not  he.^ 
Judas  showed  his  fiercer  and  more  dissatisfied  spirit  in 
open  and  ungenerous  criticism,  though  the  mind  that 
prompted  it  was  shared  by  all.^ 

In  those  dark  days,  then,  we  see  the  conflict  of  the  rival 
forces — the  transforming  love  attracting  the  one  way,  the 
ancient  convictions  drawing  the  other.  The  man  from 
Kerioth  could  not  get  near  Jesus  because  of  his  own  ideas 
as  to  what  the  Christ  ought  to  be,  and  so  the  love  that  is 
the  best  creator  of  truthful  loyalty  could  not  exercise  over 
him  its  holy  and  beneficent  influence.  The  fellowship 
that  does  not  beget  affinity  evokes  antipathy,  the  mind 
that  has  not  learned  to  love  is  dangerously  near  to  hate. 
While  Christ's  spirit  had  been  growing  readier  for  sacri- 
fice, Judas's  had  been  getting  more  selfish,  waxing  bitter 
over  its  vanishing  ideals.  The  fuller  Christ's  speech  be- 
came of  suffering  and  death  the  more  offensive  it  grew  to 
Judas — the  more  like  a  mockery  of  his  ancient  hopes. 
Such  a  conflict  of  mind  and  thought  between  Master  and 
disciple  could  not  continue  for  ever  ;  and  it  could  have  but 
one  end.  The  longer  it  endured  and  the  more  it  was  re- 
pressed, the  wider  grew  the  breach  and  the  more  bitter 
the  feeling.  The  moment  when  Christ's  words  and  acts 
were  most  significant  of  death  and  sacrifice  was  also  the 
moment  when  discipleship  became  impossible  to  Judas, 

*  John  xi.  16.  2  Matt.  xxvi.  33,  34  ;   Mark  xiv.  29. 

3  John  xii.  4-6  ;  Matt.  xxvi.  8,  9.  These  references  must  be  studied 
together  in  order  to  a  right  appreciation  alike  of  Judas  and  the  other 
disciples.  Both  evidently  reter  to  the  same  incident.  Matthew's  nar- 
rative shows  that  the  feeling  of  dissatisfaction  was  common,  and  the 
condemnation  of  the  act  common  too ;  but  John's  seems  to  show 
that  Judas  was  the  man  who  fomented  or  expressed  the  feeling,  who 
was  its  cause,  or  voice,  or  both.  In  any  case  Matthew  does  not  here 
leave  Judas  in  the  bad  pre-eminence  he  is  made  to  hold  with  John. 


274  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

and  apostasy  inevitable.  While  the  Master  remained  to 
institute  the  Supper  of  everlasting  remembrance,  the  dis- 
ciple went  forth  to  betray  Him. 

No  one  hates  like  an  apostate.  The  cause  he  deserts 
is  an  offence  to  him.  It  is  the  monument  of  a  happier 
past,  of  hopes  that  deluded,  of  conflicts  that  have  ended 
in  the  defeat  of  conscience  and  the  loss  of  honour.  The 
more  honest  the  apostate  the  deeper  will  be  his  hate,  for 
his  apostasy  will  imply  a  more  violent  distress  and  dis- 
turbance of  nature.  The  man  who  is  not  in  earnest  is 
incapable  of  any  strong  aversion,  powerful  feelings  being 
everywhere  at  once  the  expression  and  measure  of 
sincerity.  And  he  who  forsakes  a  cause,  believing  it  has 
deceived  and  wronged  him,  feels  that  he  cannot  spare  it, 
can  only  be  its  remorseless  foe.  Revenge  becomes  a 
passion  which  must  be  gratified  before  the  man  can  be 
happy.  And  Judas  acts  like  an  apostate  to  whom  revenge 
is  dear.  Hate  like  his  is  a  sure  diviner,  as  quick  to 
recognize  hate  in  all  its  varying  degrees  and  capabilities  as 
love  is  to  discern  love.  And  so  with  the  unerring  instinct 
of  his  kind  he  seeks  the  chief  priests.  "  And  they  were 
glad,  and  covenanted  to  give  him  money ; " '  but  the 
sweet  thing  was  the  revenge,  not  the  money.  Yet  why 
did  they  need  him  ?  Jesus  was  defenceless,  was  in  their 
city,  on  their  streets,  teaching  openly — what  need,  then,  of 
a  covenant  with  the  traitor?  It  was  not  enough  to 
capture,  it  was  necessary  to  condemn  Him,  and  so  con- 
demn Him  that  the  Roman  would  execute  the  judgment. 
Only  the  most  delicate  handling  could  insure  the  death 
that  had  been  deemed  "expedient."^  The  conditions 
were  dangerous  :  the  millions  then  gathered  in  and  about 
Jerusalem  formed  a  most  explosive  mass.  The  Jews  were 
a  proud  and  fanatical  race,  believing  themselves  the 
chosen  of  God,  the  Jacob  He  loved,  the  Israel  in  whom 
•  Luke  xxii.  5.  '  John  xi.  50. 


THE  BETRAYER,  275 

His  soul  delighted.  They  despised  the  Roman  as  a  Gen- 
tile while  hating  him  as  a  conqueror.  He  might  be 
allowed  for  a  little  to  chastise  them  for  their  sins;  but 
once  it  pleased  God  to  have  mercy  upon  Zion  and  restore 
her  freedom,  the  Roman  would  have  to  go  forth  weeping, 
while  they  had  their  mouths  filled  with  laughter  and  their 
tongues  with  singing.  And  the  hope  in  the  return  of  the 
Divine  favour  was  just  then  at  its  intensest,  insensible  to 
discouragement,  sensitive  to  every  propitious  sign,  ready 
to  anticipate  or  respond  to  it  in  deeds  of  fierce  fanaticism. 
This  hope  so  possessed  the  people  then  within  and  about 
Jerusalem  that  it  glowed  in  them  like  a  passion.  The 
sight  of  the  Roman  was  an  insult  to  their  pride  and 
their  faith.  The  millions  were  conscious  of  their  multi- 
tude, of  their  strength,  of  ideals  of  authority  and  empire 
that  far  transcended  the  Roman.  Were  the  belief  to 
seize  them  that  their  Messiah  had  come,  it  would  raise 
them  into  an  army  of  fanatics,  inspired  by  an  awful  hate 
to  Rome  and  a  sublime  enthusiasm  for  their  city  and  their 
hopes.  The  priests  knew  the  possibilities  that  slumbered 
in  the  multitudes,  but  they  knew  not  the  resources 
of  Jesus.  The  people's  action  they  could  forecast,  but 
not  Christ's.  And  with  them  not  to  know  was  to  sus- 
pect. The  bad  can  never  understand  the  good,  fear  that 
their  good  is  only  disguised  evil,  the  worse  and  more 
mischievous  from  being  so  skilfully  concealed.  And  so 
the  priests  feared  Jesus,  believed  that  He  would  do  what 
they  would  have  done  had  they  been  in  His  place.  They 
thought  that  to  take  Him  in  public  would  be  to  court 
disaster.  The  people  believed  in  Him,  and  to  threaten 
Him  might  be  to  force  their  belief  into  irrevocable  deeds. 
For  to  see  Him  taken  captive  by  the  Roman  would  be  to 
their  hot  imagination  proof  of  His  Messiahship,  evidence 
that  Caesar  feared  the  Christ.  So  the  thing  must  be  done 
secretly.     If  there  was  power  in  Him,  He  must  not  be 


2  76  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

allowed  to  exercise  it  over  the  people,  or  the  people  to  see 
it.  If  there  was  faith  in  Him,  it  must  not  be  provoked 
by  a  public  arrest,  but  be  shamed  into  silence  and  out  of 
existence  by  the  sight  of  a  broken  and  humiliated  and 
smitten  captive.  And  so  the  coming  of  the  traitor  was 
like  the  descent  of  wisdom  into  their  counsels;  it  made 
the  difficult  possible  and  the  dark  light. 

What  help  the  traitor  needed  he  received,  and,  familiar 
with  the  haunts  of  Jesus,  he  led  forth  the  band  to  Geth- 
semane.  There  they  met  the  Saviour  fresh  from  His 
agony  and  His  prayer;  and  hate,  that  it  might  the  better 
gratify  itself,  tried  to  use  the  language  and  the  symbols 
of  love.  Over  the  scene  we  may  not  linger,  though  it  is 
in  its  tragic  contrasts  one  of  the  moments  the  imagination 
has  most  loved  to  picture.  There,  under  the  silent  stars, 
in  the  glare  of  the  red  torchlight,  two  faces  that  were  as 
heaven  and  hell  meeting,  joined  in  what  was  at  once  the 
holiest  and  most  profane  kiss  ever  given  by  human  lips. 
But  the  deed  was  soon  done,  and  Jesus,  in  the  cold  dark 
midnight,  encircled  by  flaming  torches  and  coarse  cruel 
men,  returned  to  Jerusalem.  "  Peter  followed  afar  off," 
and  so  did  another  disciple,  made  bold  by  a  love  many 
waters  could  not  quench.  But  deep  as  was  their  anguish, 
in  another  spirit  there  was  a  deeper.  There  is  a  hate 
that  dies  by  indulgence — a  revenge  that,  gratified,  begets 
remorse.  A  mean  and  miserly  nature,  incapable  of  com- 
manding emotions,  had  been  able  to  sell  Jesus  and  feel 
only  the  happier  for  being  free  of  His  presence  and 
possessed  of  the  *'  thirty  pieces  of  silver,"  which  was  His 
price.  But  with  an  earnest  and  intense  nature,  whose 
hate  was  born  of  disappointed  hope  and  baffled  ambition, 
it  was  altogether  different.  The  apostasy  of  Judas  came 
from  the  feeling  that  he  had  been  deceived,  but  the 
despair  of  Judas  from  the  consciousness  that  he  had 
deceived  himself,  and  so  become  the  author  of  a  stupen- 


THE  BETRAYER,  277 

dous  crime.  Evil  premeditated  is  evil  at  its  best — attrac- 
tive, desirable,  full  of  promises  which  the  senses  can 
understand  and  the  passions  love ;  but  evil  perpetrated  is 
evil  at  its  worst  —hideous,  hateful,  stripped  ofits  illusions, 
and  clothed  in  its  native  misery.  In  his  anger  at  finding 
Jesus  not  to  be  the  Christ  he  had  hoped  for  and  desired, 
Judas  deserted  and  betrayed  Him  ;  in  the  terrible  calm 
that  succeeded  indulgence  he  awoke  to  the  realities  within 
and  about  him,  saw  how  blindly  he  had  lived  and  hated, 
how  far  the  Messianic  ideal  of  Jesus  transcended  his  own. 
There  are  moments  that  are  big  with  eternities,  when 
the  walls  self  has  built  round  the  spirit  fall,  and  the 
infinite  realities  of  God  stand  clear  before  the  soul. 
Such  was  the  moment  after  the  betrayal  to  the  betrayer. 
In  it  he  knew  at  once  himself  and  Jesus,  saw  his  lost 
opportunity  and  his  awful  crime.  Above  the  lurid  torch- 
light gleamed  the  silent  beautiful  stars ;  to  the  eye  of 
Jesus  they  were  full  of  pity,  but  to  the  eye  of  Judas 
they  were  full  of  blame.  Calm,  magnanimous  Nature  in 
heaven  and  on  earth  made  the  one  peaceful  and  strong, 
but  the  other  remorseful  and  weak.  Sorrow  subdued 
into  resignation  is  holy  happiness ;  but  revenge  glutted 
is  remorse  roused. 

The  suddenly  awakened  conscience  is  a  terrible  power; 
compared  with  it  justice  is  gentle  and  law  is  mild.  The 
man  in  whom  it  lives  feels  neither  inclined  nor  able  to  for- 
give himself,  sees  only  where  and  in  what  he  is  blame- 
worthy. In  its  burning  light  whatever  can  deepen  guilt  is 
made  to  stand  out  clear,  sharp,  and  distinct ;  while  every 
apology  or  extenuating  circumstance  is  consumed.  So 
Judas  judges  himself  with  awful  severity,  and  hastens  to 
execute  judgment.  The  moments  move  swiftly,  but  with 
sure  consequence.  He  does  not  wait  for  the  issue  of  his 
act,  but  anticipates  it.  He  knows  the  men,  watches  the 
trial,  hears  Jesus  condemned,  and  then  abandons  himself 


2  78  STUDIES  IN  THE  II FE  OF  CHRIST, 

to  his  horror  and  remorse.  With  the  judges,  the  men 
whose  hireling  he  had  been,  he  had  no  part  or  lot.  He 
was  in  earnest,  they  were  not ;  it  was  a  matter  of  life  and 
death  to  him,  of  "  expediency "  and  craft  with  them. 
When  they  had  compassed  their  end,  they  were  satisfied  ; 
but  he  had  by  the  betrayal  defeated,  as  he  now  understood, 
his  own  purpose,  given  One  holy,  harmless,  and  beautiful 
over  into  the  hands  of  sinners.  Christ  before  His  judges 
became  intelligible  to  the  man  with  the  awakened  con- 
science; His  spiritual  meaning,  aims,  Messiahship  all  stood 
clear  before  his  eye,  while  the  men  that  were  trying  Him, 
with  their  hollow  and  selfish  worldliness,  turned,  as  it 
were,  into  living  transparencies.  And  so  the  trial  was 
enough  ;  he  could  not  live  to  see  the  end.  He  would  hide 
himself  in  the  grave ;  seek  the  blindness  of  death.  The 
scene  with  the  chief  priests  is  most  characteristic.  They 
calm,  cynical,  satisfied  ;  he  agitated,  reproachful,  remorse- 
ful. He  cries,  *'  I  have  sinned  in  that  I  have  betrayed 
innocent  blood."  They  answer,  "  That  is  thy  own  con- 
cern. What  is  it  to  us  ?  "^  The  "  thirty  pieces  of  silver** 
he  cannot  keep,  each  accuses  him  so.  He  casts  them 
down  in  his  agony,  turns  and  flees  from  the  temple,  a  fugi- 
tive from  conscience,  from  self,  yet  only  the  more  pursued 
by  the  remorseful  self,  the  reproachful  conscience,  unable 
to  face  life  followed  by  a  so  awful  Nemesis,  able  only  to 
seek  quiet  in  death  and  a  refuge  in  the  grave. 

The  end  of  the  traitor  became  him.  It  was  the  way  in 
which  he  confessed  his  crime  and  made  atonement  for  it 
to  his  conscience.  We  ought  to  think  of  Judas,  if  not  the 
better,  the  more  kindly  for  his  end.  It  proved  him  not 
altogether  bad — that  the  actual  apostate  had  been  a  pos- 
sible apostle.  Imagine  how  much  worse  a  calmer  end 
had  shown  him.  If  he  had  lived  a  man  without  pas- 
sion or  pain ;  if  he  had  lifted  to  heaven  a  serene  brow  and 
*  Matt,  xxvii.  3-5. 


THE  BETRAYER.  279 

looked  out  on  man  like  a  consciously  excellent  soul ;  if 
he  had  enlarged  his  phylactery,  lengthened  his  robe,  and 
extended  his  prayers  at  the  corners  of  the  streets  and  in 
the  temple;  if  he  had  gone  daily  to  the  house  of  his 
friend,  the  chief  Rabbi,  and  been  often  in  good  fellow- 
ship with  his  honoured  and  dignified  neighbour,  the  high 
priest ;  if  he  had  lived  in  the  exercise  of  his  religion,  died 
in  the  odour  of  respectability,  and  been  buried  amid  the 
regrets  and  eulogies  of  his  sect  and  city — would  he  not 
have  been  a  man  of  lower  nature  and  baser  spirit  than  he 
seems  now  as,  seeking  to  escape  his  sin  and  his  conscience, 
he  flees  out  of  time  into  eternity  ?  Judas  despairful  is  a 
better  man  than  Judas  respectable  had  been ;  and  if  his 
remorse  has  touched  the  heart  of  man  into  pity,  who  shall 
say  that  it  found  or  made  severe  and  pitiless  the  heart  of 
God? 


XVI. 
THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRTAL. 

It  is  remarkable  that  "  the  chief  priests'*  have  at  first  no 
place  in  the  evangelical  history;  they  begin  to  appear  only 
when  it  begins  to  be  tragic.  Their  presence  is  as  the 
shadow  of  death.  While  the  Pharisees  and  scribes,  like 
men  zealous  for  the  law  and  careful  of  the  people,  anxiously 
examine  every  act  and  criticize  every  word  of  Jesus,  the 
priests  seem  while  He  is  most  active  to  be  entirely  uncon- 
cerned, leave  Him  untroubled  with  questions,  undisturbed 
by  opposition  or  argument.  The  men  who  are  shocked  at 
the  good  deeds  done  on  the  Sabbath,^  who  murmur  at  the 
Rabbi  that  teaches  "publicans  and  sinners,"  and  "  eateth 
with  them,"^  who  persistently  interrogate  Christ  and 
attempt  to  silence  Him  with  legal  maxims  and  puzzle  Him 
with  exegetical  difficulties, ^  who  even  dare  to  measure  His 
sanctity  by  their  legalism  and  His  truth  by  their  traditions,^ 
are  the  Pharisees  and  scribes.  But  while  they  are  the  in- 
variable background  of  the  picture,  the  priests  are  con- 
spicuous by  their  absence.  They  neither  resist  nor  befriend 
Christ  ;  they  simply  do  not  appear.  This  absence  cannot 
be  explained  by  any  gentleness  of  speech  or  spirit  of  con- 
ciliation on  His  part.  The  Good  Samaritan^  was  as  severe 
a  satire  on  the  priest  as  the  two  men  praying  in  the  temple^ 

*  Mark  iii.  i-6  ;  Luke  vi.  i-ii. 

•  Luke  XV.  2  ;  vii.  39  ;  Matt.  ix.  10,  11  ;  Mark  ii.  16, 

3  Matt.  xix.  3  ;  xxii.  35-40  ;   Mark  x.  2. 

4  Matt.  XV.  I,  2;  Mark  vii.  1-5  ;   Luke  xi.  37,  38. 

5  Luke  x.  31,  32.  6  Luke  xviii.  10-14. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL,  281 

was  on  the  Pharisee.  But  priestly  silence  did  not  mean 
priestly  tenderness,  as  is  evident  from  the  first  and  most 
significant  synoptic  reference  to  *'the  chief  priests."  This 
is  made  by  Christ  Himself.  He  declares,  before  ever  they 
have  appeared  on  the  scene,  that  He  is  to  suffei  many 
things  at  their  hands,  is  to  be  delivered  unto  them  and  to 
be  by  them  condemned  to  death.'     If  v^e  confine  ourselves 

'  Matt  xvi.  21  ;  XX.  18  ;  Mark  viii.  31  ;  x.  33  ;  Luke  ix.  22.  It  is  an 
extraordinary  and  instructive  fact  that  no  allusions  to  the  "chief  priests" 
in  connection  with  Christ  should  be  made  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  till 
He  begins  to  anticipate  His  passion  and  foretell  His  death.  It  is  a 
fact  of  equal  critical  and  historical  importance  ;  critical,  inasmuch  as 
it  shows  how  the  Fourth  Gospel  can  explain  otherwise  inexplicable  re- 
ferences in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  (comp.  with  the  above  texts  John  vii. 
32,  45,  46)  ;  historical,  inasmuch  as  it  brings  out  the  essential  character 
of  the  great  Jewish  parties,  defines  and  determines  their  relation  both 
to  Judaism  and  Christ.  The  mere  figures  are  suggestive  and  significant. 
Thus  apx^epcTg  occurs  (Matt.  ii.  4  ;  Mark  ii.  16  ;  and  Luke  iii.  2  having 
no  relevance  to  the  history)  first  in  Matt,  in  xvi.  21,  then  in  xx.  once, 
xxi.  thrice,  xxvi.  eleven  times,  xxvii.  seven  times,  xxviii.  once  ;  first  in 
Mark  in  viii.  31,  x.  once,  xi.  twice,  xiv.  twelve  times,  xv.  five  times  ; 
first  in  Luke  in  ix.  22,  xix.  once,  xx.  twice,  xxii.  six  times,  xxiii.  four 
times,  xxiv.  once  ;  first  in  John  in  vii.  32,  45,  xi.  four  times,  xii.  once, 
xvii.  eleven  times,  xix.  thrice.  The  earlier  references,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  those  in  John  vii.,  are  to  Christ's  predictions  of  their  action : 
the  later  describe  that  action,  which  belongs  entirely  to  the  history  of 
the  passion.  As  to  the  Pharisees,  the  order  is  entirely  reversed.  The 
references  are,  in  Matt.  iii.  once,  v.  once,  vii.  once,  ix.  thrice,  xii.  four 
times,  XV.  twice,  xvi.  four  times,  xix.  once  (?),  xxi.  once,  xxii.  three  times, 
xxiii.  (the  woes)  nine  times,  xxvii.  once  ;  in  Mark  ii.  four  times,  iii. 
once,  vii.  thrice,  viii.  twice,  ix.  once,  xii.  once ;  in  Luke  v.  four  times, 
vi.  twice,  vii.  five  times,  xi.  seven  times,  xii.  once,  xiii.  once,  xiv.  twice, 
XV.  once,  xvi.  once,  xvii.  once,  xviii.  twice,  xix.  once  ;  in  John  i.  once 
iii.  once,  iv.  once,  vii.  five  times,  viii.  twice,  ix.  four  times,  xi.  thrice,  xii. 
twice,  xviii.  once.  By  comparing  these  references  we  see  that  the 
Pharisaic  activity  was  greatest  during  the  ministry,  the  priestly  during 
the  passion.  So  far  as  the  Synoptics  are  concerned,  the  Pharisees 
may  be  said  to  have  been  as  completely  absent  from  the  passion  as 
the  priests  from  the  ministry.  The  Fourth  Gospel  shows  them,  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  passion,  associated  with  the  priests,  but  never 
active  as  they  were,  disappearing  finally  at  the  capture,  taking  no  part 
19 


282  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

to  the  Synoptists,  this  reference  to  men  who  have  nevef 
either  spoken  or  acted  against  Him  is  surprising;  but  if 
we  turn  to  the  Fourth  Gospel  it  ceases  to  surprise.  There 
the  action  and  allusions  in  the  synoptic  histories  are  ex- 
plained. Christ  knew  the  priests  to  be  absolute  enemies  ; 
His  prophecy  but  expressed  His  experience.  Their  an- 
tagonism was  too  deep  to  condescend  to  words  ;  deeds 
alone  could  declare  it.  The  Pharisees  might  aim  at  victory 
by  argument,  but  the  priests  did  not  mean  to  waste  words 
on  one  doomed  to  death.  So  the  moment  Jesus  came 
within  their  reach  their  fatal  activity  began.  They  took 
offence  at  His  presence  and  conduct  in  the  temple,  de- 
manded the  authority  by  which  He  acted,  and  abstained 
from  seizing  Him  only  because  "they  feared  the  multitude."' 
Their  purpose  was  one  and  inflexible ;  their  only  point  of 
uncertainty  how  best  and  most  safely  to  work  His  death. ^ 
Now,  how  is  this  extraordinary  difference  in  attitude 
and  action  of  the  Pharisees  and  Priests  to  be  explained  ? 
Without  the  former,  Christ  the  Teacher  would  have  been 
without  contradiction  and  criticism  ;  without  the  latter, 
Christ  the  Sufferer  would  not  have  known  the  mockery 
of  the  trial  or  the  shame  and  agony  of  the  cross.  The 
men  who  most  strenuously  argued  against  Him  appear 
to  have  shrunk  from  the  national  infidelity  and  crime 
needed  to  work  His  death  ;  while  the  men  who  compassed 
it  were  the  men  who  had  seemed  to  stand  carelessly  aloof 
from  Him  in  the  period  of  His  mightiest  activity  and  in- 
whatever  in  the  trial  and  crucifixion.  The  Synoptists  indeed  often  as- 
sociate the  scribes  with  the  chief  priests  in  the  processes  that  resulted 
in  the  death  on  the  cross  ;  but  it  is  evident  they  did  not  regard  this  as 
equal  to  the  participation  of  the  Pharisees  as  a  party  or  a  body. 
"  Chief  priests  and  scribes"  (Luke  xxii.  2,  66  ;  xxiii.  10  ;  Mark  xiv.  i) 
was  but  a  phrase  denotive  of  the  Sanhedrin,  which,  though  it  contained 
Pharisees,  was  essentially  priestly  in  its  constitution. 

*  Matt,  xxi  15,  23,  46. 

*  Ibid.  xxvi.  3,  4 ;  Luke  xxii.  2  ;  John  xi.  50. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL.  283 

fluence.  Yet  there  was  no  decrease  of  antagonism  on  the 
one  hand,  or  increase  of  it  on  the  other.  The  Pharisees 
did  not  cease  to  be  opposed  to  Christ,  or  the  priests  then 
begir  their  opposition.  They  had  always  hated  and  always 
been  ready  to  express  their  hatred,  but  ever  in  deadly 
forms,  and  only  when  they  promised  to  be  effectual,  never 
in  the  way  of  remonstrance  or  argument.  The  Pharisees 
were  wishful  to  controvert  that  they  might  convert.  We 
can  well  believe  that  the  men  who  would  have  compassed 
heaven  and  earth  to  make  one  proselyte,  would  feel  an 
almost  boundless  desire  to  bring  to  their  side  the  young 
Rabbi  of  Nazareth.  But  the  priests  had  no  such  desire, 
had  no  need  or  room  for  Him,  had  only  the  conviction 
that  His  life  was  a  standing  menace  to  their  authority, 
and  His  death  a  politic  expedient. 

In  seeking  the  reason  of  these  differences  we  must 
clearly  conceive  the  historical  character  and  relations  of 
the  parties  concerned.  The  Pharisees  in  their  relation 
to  Jesus  have  already  been  discussed  and  described.  ^ 
They  were  the  party  of  national  principle  and  patriotism, 
who  believed  in  the  absolute  kinghood  of  Jahveh,  the 
continuous  and  progressive  character  of  His  revelation, 
the  supremacy  of  His  law,  the  obligation  of  His  people 
to  obey  Him  in  all  things — the  minutest  as  well  as  the 
mightiest.  The  chief  priests,  on  the  other  hand,  belonged 
to  the  Sadducees,  *  the  party  of  expediency  and  official 
policy.  This  association  of  the  chief  priests,  the  highest 
representatives  of  Jewish  religion,  with  the  Sadducees,  the 
poorest  representatives  of  Jewish  faith,  may  seem  curious 
and  almost  unreal.  But  it  is  as  eminently  natural  as  it  is 
undoubtedly  historical.  In  ideal  Judaism  the  priest  is  as 
the  foremost,  also  the  noblest  man.  He  is  the  repre- 
sentative of  God  before  men,  of  man  before  God,  approved 

I  Supra,  165,  ff. 

■  Acts  V.  17  ;  iv.  I.    Josephus,  AnU.y  xv.  9.  I. 


284  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

and  trusted  of  both.  With  man  he  is  able  to  sympathize, 
with  God  he  is  qualified  to  plead,  a  mediator  the  weak 
can  love  and  the  strong  can  respect.^  Into  his  ear  man 
can  confess  his  sin,  into  his  hands  commit  his  soul, 
certain  that  he  will  be  gracious  to  the  one  and  obtain  for- 
giveness for  the  other.  God  makes  him  the  vehicle  of 
His  mercy,  the  interpreter  of  His  authority  for  men, 
certain  that  he  will  not  weaken  the  authority  or  deprave 
the  mercy.  But  the  ideal  priest  finds  a  tragic  contrast  in 
the  actual.  In  Judaism  he  was  as  often  a  mischievous  as 
a  beneficent  power.  The  prophets  before  the  captivity 
found  sacerdotal  worship  sensuous,  unspiritual,  and  un- 
ethical, strove  to  repress  it  by  representing  Jahveh  as 
"  full  of  the  burnt  offerings  of  rams  and  the  fat  of  fed 
beasts,"  as  One  not  to  be  **  pleased  with  thousands  ol 
rams  or  ten  thousand  rivers  of  oil,"  as  not  desiring 
sacrifice  or  delighting  in  burnt  offering,  but  only  in  the 
broken  and  contrite  heart.^  At  and  after  the  captivity 
the  priests  seemed  to  become  a  nobler  race,  possessed  of 
the  prophetic  beliefs,  the  organs  of  the  prophetic  ideals, 
living  to  realize  in  and  through  Israel  the  reign  of  the  one 
God.  3  Into  their  worship  another  spirit  had  been  breathed, 
its  sensuous  forms  were  ruled  by  an  ethical  purpose  and 
purified  by  holier  and  more  transcendent  ideas.  In  the 
completed  Mosaic  legislation  the  theocratic  faith  was  ar- 
ticulated, and  every  part  of  the  Levitical  ritual  penetrated 
and  illumined  by  the  mind  which  lives  and  speaks  in 
Deuteronomy.  But  the  period  of  exaltation  was  short 
lived,  form  and  routine  proved  stronger  than  spirit,  and 
God  and  His  people  were  made  to  exist  for  the  priest 
rather  than  the  priest  for  them.'^    The  sacerdotal  Judaism 

I  Heb.  ii.  17,  [8;    v.  1-4;    vii.  25-28. 
■  Isa.  i.  II  ;    Micah  vi.  7  ;    Psa.  li.  17,  18. 

3  Haggai  ii.  1-9  ;   Zech.  iii.,  iv. ;    vi.  9-15. 

4  Mai.  i.  5-14;   ii.  7-10,  17. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL.  285 

and  the  prophetic  Hebraism  were  distinctly  incompatible 
— a  universal  monotheism  could  not  be  incorporated  in  a 
worship  that  was  at  once  inflexibly  sensuous  and  fanati- 
cally national.  So  there  grew  up  within  Judaism  a 
tendency  opposed  to  the  priestly,  more  akin  to  the 
spiritual  and  prophetic.  This  was  embodied  in  the 
Sopherim,  the  wise,  the  men  learned  in  the  law,  the 
written  and  spoken  word  of  God.^  These  scribes,  inter- 
preters of  the  Scriptures  and  conservers  of  tradition, 
represented  the  belief  in  the  living  God  who  continued  to 
speak  to  His  people  and  to  act  on  their  behalf.  They  and 
the  priests  were  in  their  fundamental  ideas  radically  op- 
posed. The  scribes  emphasized  the  ideas  of  law  and 
precept,  and  so  believed  that  man's  best  service  of  God 
was  by  obedience  ;  but  the  priests  emphasized  the  idea  of 
worship,  and  so  held  that  man  could  best  please  God  by 
sacrifice  and  offering.  The  scribes  had  a  keen  sense  for 
the  ethical,  but  the  priests  for  the  ritual,  elements  in 
Mosaism ;  the  former  held  the  whole  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  sacred,  but  for  the  latter  sanctity  and  authority 
mainly  belonged  to  the  books  which  embodied  the  Mosaic 
legislation.  The  scribes  were  the  interpreters  of  an  ever- 
living  Will,  but  the  priests  the  ministers  and  administrators 
of  a  constituted  system,  which  invested  them  with  all 
the  rights  and  authority  they  possessed.  It  necessarily 
followed  that  these  orders,  representative  of  so  different 
ideas,  stood  in  very  different  relations  to  the  people  and 
their  history  and  hopes.  The  priests  were  conservative, 
the  scribes  progressive.  The  priests  were  zealous  for 
everything  that  concerned  the  worship,  could  allow  the 
intrusion  of  no  alien  god  or  rite,  and  had  proved  them- 
selves, as  in  the  case  of  the  Maccabees,  capable  of  the 
most  splendid   heroism  both  in  resistance  and   defence. 

»  Ewald,  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel^  iv.  162,  ff.  (2nd  ed.)    Kuenen, 
Godsdienst  van  Israel^  ii.  237,  fT. 


286  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CUEIST. 

The  scribes  were  zealous  for  everything  that  concerned 
the  law,  i.e.,  the  living  revelation  of  the  living  God,  and 
were  ambitious,  not  simply  that  the  theocratic  worship 
might  be  performed,  but  that  the  theocratic  polity  might 
be  realized  in  society  and  the  State.  And  so  the  highest 
idea  of  the  priest  was  expressed  in  the  temple,  and  his 
best  hope  for  Israel  was  the  maintenance  of  a  clear  and 
well-ordered  worship  ;  but  the  highest  idea  of  the  scribe 
was  a  people  free  to  obey  the  law  and  entirely  obedient 
to  it,  and  his  great  hope,  the  Messiah  who  was  to  come, 
who  was  to  be  no  priest,  but  a  prince,  able  victoriously, 
not  to  sacrifice,  but  to  deliver  Israel  from  the  alien  and 
leave  him  the  willing  subject  of  Jahveh  alone. 

It  ought  to  be  more  possible  now  to  understand  the 
relations  of  the  Pharisaic  scribes  and  Sadducean  priests  to 
Jesus.  ^  The  scribes  were  essentially  teachers,  and  the 
scene  of  their  activity  was  the  school  and  the  synagogue,  * 
but  the  priests  were  essentially  officiants,  performers  of  a 
worship  mainly  ritual,  and  their  proper  and  peculiar  sphere 
was  the  temple.  These  two  places,  indeed — the  syna- 
gogue and  the  temple — represented  the  two  great  forces 
in  Judaism,  the  one  didactic  and  rational,  the  other 
sensuous  and  sacerdotal ;  the  one  diffused  and  expansive, 
seeking  to  instruct  and  guide  the  people,  the  other  con- 
centrated and  conservative,  seeking  to  maintain  its  place 
in    the   nation    and    prevent    the    various    disintegrating 

*  While  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  are  so 
associated  as  to  be  now  and  then  almost  identified,  yet  it  is  necessary 
to  keep  them  distinct.  All  scribes  were  not  Pharisees,  nor  all  Pharisees 
scribes.  The  Pharisees  were  a  politico-religious  party,  the  scribes  a 
learned  corporation.  The  Sadducees  had  their  scribes  as  well  as  the 
Pharisees  ;  but  while  the  former  reposed  on  the  hereditary  and  family 
principle,  the  latter  built  on  Scripture  and  tradition,  and  so  had  much 
more  affinity  with  the  scribes.  See  Lightfoot's  Horcp  Heb,  et  Talm,^ 
Vv^orks,  vol.  ii.  p.  433  (ed.  1684). 

■  Ezra  vii.  10. 


THE  CHIEF  FRIESTS— THE  TRIAL,  387 

agencies   from    breaking   up  the  system  it  crowned  and 
completed.     In   the   very  nature  of  things  the   teachers 
would   be  the  first    to  be  jealous   of  Jesus.     He   was  a 
Teacher;    His  great   themes  were  the  very  themes  the 
scribes  were  accustomed  to  handle.    The  purpose  and  end 
of  the  Law  and  the  Prophets,  their  meaning  and  range,  the 
kind  of  service  God  required,  the  interpretation  and  value 
of  the  different  commandments,  the  nature  of  prayer,  the 
character  of  God  and  His  relation  to  man  in  general  and 
the  Jews  in  particular,  the  kingdom  of  God,  what  it  was, 
when  it  was  to  come,  and  who  were  to  be  its  citizens— 
these,  and  such-like,  were  the  questions  discussed  in  the 
Jewish  schools  and  discoursed  on  by  Christ.     He  was  to 
the  scribes  one  who  had  invaded  their  province  and  defied 
their  authority,  who  denied  the  traditons  of  the  fathers, 
ridiculed    and    reversed    all    the    interpretations   of    the 
schools.    And  so  they  resisted  Him  at  every  step,  opposed 
Him  in  every  possible  way,  exhausted  the  resources  of 
their  scholastic  subtlety  to  refute  and  discredit  Him.     All 
this  the  priests  might  greatly  enjoy.     They  did  not  love 
the  scribes,  disbelieved  their  traditions,  feared  their  funda- 
mental ideas,  disliked  their  power  with  the  people.     And 
so  they  might  well  be  pleased  when  they  heard  that  a  new 
Teacher  had  arisen  who  was  confounding  their  ancient 
foes.     But   the  matter  was    entirely  changed   when   He 
touched  their  order,   threatened   their    city   and    system. 
Once  they  com^prehended  His  position,  saw  the  action  of 
His  ideas  and  aims,  they  at  once  became  inimical  and 
vigilant.     They  did  not  argue  or  reason — that  was  not  in 
their  way  ;  they   acted.     And  the    reality  and  design   of 
their  action  are   seen   in   Christ's  anticipations  and  pre- 
dictions.    To  go  to  Jerusalem  is  to  go  into  suffering ;  to 
fall  into  their  hands  is  to  fall  into  the  jaws  of  death.     In 
Galilee,  where  the  priests  did  not  reign.  He  was  safe,  but 
He  could  **  not  walk  in  Jewry,  because  the  Jews  sought 


'^8S  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

to  kill  Him."  *  Where  He  was  most  active,  where  He 
had  by  His  words  and  acts  given  deepest  and  most  deadly 
offence,  He  was  not  threatened ;  but  He  could  not  touch 
Judaea  without,  as  it  were,  feeling  the  cold  shadow  of  the 
cross. 

It  is  here  where  the  Fourth  Gospel  becomes  so  sig- 
nificant and,  in  the  highest  sense,  historical ;  by  showing 
the  attitude  of  Jerusalem  to  Jesus  it  explains  His  attitude 
to  Jerusalem.  The  Synoptists,  who  are  mainly  concerned 
with  Galilee,  have  no  premonition  of  the  cross  till  almost, 
like  a  bolt  out  of  a  blue  sky,  it  breaks  on  us  from  the 
mouth  of  Jesus ;  but  John,  who  is  mainly  concerned  with 
Judaea,  shows  us  Jesus  forced  on  each  visit  to  retire  from 
it  in  danger  of  death.  ^  The  scribes  alone  would  reason, 
but  would  not  kill;  the  priests  would  not  reason  but 
would  crucify.  From  the  hands  of  His  great  antagonists 
Christ  anticipates  no  evil,  but  at  the  hands  of  the  "  chief 
priests  and  rulers"  He  knows  He  is  to  die. 

But  the  whole  case  is  not  yet  before  us.  The  "  chief 
priests"  of  the  New  Testament  can  become  fully  intel- 
ligible only  when  their  peculiar  historical  and  political 
position  is  comprehended.  What  may  be  termed  the 
Sadducean  ideal  was  a  hierocracy,  while  that  of  their  rivals 
was  a  theocracy.  The  very  conditions  that  made  the 
theocracy  impossible  favoured  the  growth  of  the  hierocracy. 
The  first  could  not  live  in  the  presence  of  foreign  domina- 
tion, but  the  second  was  easily  reconciled  to  it,  and  even 
developed  by  it.  In  the  high  priest  the  Jewish  state  cul- 
minated ;  he  was  its  highest  authority,  its  living  represen- 
tative. It  knew  no  native  king,  but  had  to  bear  a  foreign 
rule.     During  the  Persian  and  Greek  dominion  the  people 

*  John  vii.  I. 

'  Chaps,  iv.  3  ;  v.  i6  ;  vii.  i,  19,  25,  30,  32,  44;  viii.  59.  Jesus 
significantly  escapes  from  this  attempt  to  stone  Him  by  escaping  out 
of  the  temple  (Chaps,  x.  -^x^  39  ;  xi.  8,  50-53,  57). 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL,  289 

had  to  appeal  to  their  conquerors  through  the  priest,  and 
through  the  priest  the  conquerors  had  to  speak  to  the 
people.  He  was  thus,  on  the  one  hand,  a  sort  of  sacer- 
dotal monaroh,  and,  on  the  other,  a  civil  ethnarch.  This 
position  was  at  once  defined  and  strengthened  by  the 
achievements  of  the  Maccabees.  They  were  in  the  fullest 
sense  king-priests,  possessed  both  of  regal  and  sacerdotal 
functions.  But  the  events  that  ended  their  dynasty 
separated  these  functions.  The  Idumean  Herod  might 
be  king,  but  he  could  not  be  priest.  The  Jew  might  bear 
a  foreign  ruler,  but  his  priest  must  be  of  pure  blood  and 
belong  to  the  priestly  stock.  So  while  Herod  usurped  the 
regal,  he  had  to  leave  untouched  the  sacerdotal  functions. 
But  what  he  could  not  take,  he  did  his  best  to  deprave. 
He  made  the  priest  his  own  creature,  instituted  and  de- 
posed at  will.  An  office  that  had  hitherto  been  inalien- 
able, he  made  to  depend  on  his  pleasure.  And  it  was  his 
pleasure  to  offend  the  tenderest  susceptibilities  of  the  Jews. 
It  was  not  in  the  Idumean  to  be  gracious  to  what  his  people 
loved  ;  he  had  joy  in  being  insolent  to  the  office  they  most 
revered.  He  showed  his  savage  insolence  both  by  the 
kind  of  men  he  selected  and  his  modes  of  displacement. 
He  first  appointed  Ananel,  a  Babylonian  Jew,  of  priestly 
descent,  but  unimportant  family.  ^  Him  he  deposed  to 
make  way  for  Aristobulus,  the  last  of  the  Maccabees,  who 
was  instituted  to  please  the  Jews,  but  drowned  to  please 
Herod.^  He  was  succeeded  by  Ananel  again,  he  by  Jesus 
the  son  of  Phabes,^  who  had  to  make  way  for  Simon,  the 
son  of  Boethus,  an  Alexandrian  Jew,  raised  to  the  high 
priesthood  because  Herod  wished  to  marry  his  daughter, 
the  second  Mariamne.'^  From  this  family  of  Boethus 
sprang  probably  the  Baithusin  of  the  Talmud,^  the  de- 

«  Jos.,  Antt.^  XV.  2.  4  ;  3.  T.  »  Ibid.  xv.  2.  5-7  ;  3.  I. 

3  Ibid.  XV.  Q.  ?.  4  Ibid.  xv.  9.  3  ;  xvii.  4.  2  ;  xviii.  5.  I. 

s  Kuenen.  Godsdienst  van  Israel^  vol.  ii.  pp.  456,  457. 


290         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

spised  enemies  of  the  scribes,  and  their  counterpart  in  the 
evangelical  history,  the  Herodians.^  The  custom  of  Herod 
was  followed  both  by  the  Herodian  family  and  the  Romans 
— the  ruler  for  the  time  being,  king  or  procurator,  insti- 
tuted or  deposed  for  reasons  of  personal  pleasure  or  politi- 
cal expediency  ;  and  so  frequent  were  the  changes  that  in 
the  course  of  little  more  than  a  century,  from  37  B.C.  to 
70  A.D.,  no  fewer  than  twenty-eight  high  priests  can  be 
reckoned.^  And  so  it  happened  that  the  office  which  was 
the  holiest  and  the  most  significant  in  Israel,  the  peak  by 
which  the  pyramid  touched  heaven,  where  man  immediately 
in  one  point  and  at  one  moment  met  Jahveh,^  became  the 
tool  or  plaything  of  lustful  or  Gentile  tyrants. 

Now  these  changes  in  the  terms  and  tenure  of  the  office 
had  many  disastrous  consequences,  personal,  religious, 
and  historical.  The  office  was  depraved  in  the  view  of  the 
people  ;  they  could  not  respect  the  creature  of  the  alien 
even  when  invested  with  the  name  and  dignity  of  God's 
high  priest.  He  was  an  offence  to  their  faith,  an  insult  to 
their  holiest  hopes.  He  did  not  represent  trust  in  Jahveh, 
but  the  power  of  the  Gentile,  the  last  and  worst  captivity 
of  Zion.  So  patriotic  zeal  was  not,  as  in  the  period  of  the 
return,  sacerdotal;  the  national  party  was  strongly  opposed 
to  the  priesthood.  The  scribes  laboured  to  make  Israel 
independent  of  the  temple,  to  substitute  for  it  the  syna- 
gogue, to  develop  the  elements  of  individual  observance 
and  obedience  in  the  law  as  distinguished  from  those  col- 
lective, hieratic,  and  hierarchic.  Then  the  men  chosen 
to  the  office  were  not  of  the  noblest  sort.  The  motives 
that  determined  the  choice  were  not  religious,  but  either 
personal  or  political.     The  man  appointed  was  not  he  who 

*  Matt.  xxii.  16 ;  Mark  iii.  6  ;  xii.  13. 
"  Schiirer,  Die  apxiepeiQim  Neuen  Testamente,  Studien  u.  Krit,  1872. 
pp.  593,  ff.     See  also  his  N.  Testamentliche  Zeitgeschichte,  pp.  418,  ft 
3  Wellhausen,  Geschichte  Israels^  vol.  i.  p.  154. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL.  291 

had,  by  blood  or  character,  the  best  claim  to  the  office, 
but  he  who  had  made  himself  most  agreeable  to  the  ruler 
or  could  best  serve  his  purpose.  The  men  that  most 
please  tyrants  and  conquerors  are  not  the  most  pleasant  to 
men  ;  their  promotion  has  no  promise  of  good  in  it  for 
land  or  people.  The  son  of  Boethus  is  made  priest  that 
he  may  be  ennobled,  and  Herod  enabled  with  dignity  to 
wed  his  daughter.  Joazar  ^  and  Eleazar  ^  are  appointed  to 
the  priesthood  because  brothers-in-law  of  Herod.  Annas,^ 
the  most  fortunate  man  of  his  time,  sees  five  sons  and  a 
son-in-law  raised  to  the  sacred  office  because  he  has  wealth, 
and  Roman  procurators  know  how  to  rule  provinces  so  as 
to  enrich  themselves.  And  these  were  not  the  only  evils. 
The  frequent  changes  created  two  classes — one  privileged, 
the  men  who  had  held  office,  another  ambitious  and  time- 
serving, those  who  hoped  to  hold  it.  A  man  who  had  been 
chief  priest  did  not  lose  the  name  with  the  dignity.  He 
continued  to  bear  it,  and  with  it  many  of  its  privileges. 
He  had  a  seat  in  the  Sanhedrin,  with  the  authority  and 
influence  that  belong  to  one  who  has  held  the  highest 
place.  He  could  exercise  both  with  a  view  to  his  own 
or  family  ends.  He  might  hope,  like  Ananel  and  Joazar, 
to  be  appointed  a  second  time,  or  he  might  wish  to  secure 
the  elevation  of  a  son  or  brother.  **  The  kindred  of  the 
high  priest  "  ^  were  potent  forces  in  Jewish  politics,  con- 
stituted the  circle  to  which  those  ambitious  of  ofiice  be- 
longed. In  the  period  now  before  us,  many  as  were  the 
chief  priests,  they  were  selected  from  only  a  few  families — 
three  were  of  the  family  of  Phabi,  three  of  the  family  of 
Kamith,  six  of  the  family  of  Boethus,  eight  of  the  family 

*  Jos.,  Antt.^  xvii.  6.  *  Ibid.  xvii.  13.  i.  3  Ibid.  xx.  9.  i.  2. 

*  Acts  iv.  6.  The  new  Testament  in  its  mode  of  speaking  of  '*  the 
chief  priests  "  and  describing  their  action  is  entirely  in  harmony  with 
Joseplius.  Cf.  Vita,  38  ;  B,  J.  ii.  12.  6 ;  20.  4 ;  iv.  3.  7  ;  4.  3  ;  9.  n  ; 
36.  9. 


tg2  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

of  Annas.*  These,  then,  may  be  said  to  have  been  the 
ruling  famihes,  each  possessing  influence  in  the  council  in 
proportion  to  the  number  of  past  chief  priests  it  could 
count.  As  the  acting  priest  was  the  creature  of  an  arbi- 
trary will,  no  one  could  tell  how  long  he  might  reign.  Each 
family  would  live  watchful  of  change  and  anxious  to  profit 
by  it,  yet  all  united  in  the  common  purpose  and  endeavour 
not  to  offend  Rome  or  furnish  her  with  an  occasion  or  ex- 
cuse for  taking  away  their  office  or  nation. 

Let  us  now  see  how  men  like  these  "  chief  priests " 
would  act  in  an  emergency  such  as  Christ  had  created. 
The  family  in  power  was  that  of  Annas.  His  son-in- 
law,  Joseph  Caiaphas,  was  high  priest,  the  thirteenth  in 
order  from  Ananel.  A  crafty  man  this  Caiaphas  must 
have  been,  for  he  held  office  much  longer  than  any  other 
man  in  this  century  of  change,  viz.,  from  i8  to  36  A.D. 
He  and  his  associates  knew  at  once  the  rulers  and  the 
ruled ;  knew  how  easy  it  was  to  exasperate  Rome  and 
how  merciless  she  was  in  her  exasperation  ;  and  knew 
how  turbulent  the  Jews  were,  and  how  susceptible  in  all 
things  touching  their  religion.  The  procurator  had 
proved  himself  fierce  and  irascible,  was  capable  alike  of 
utmost  contempt  for  Jewish  superstitions  and  coldest 
cruelty  to  Jewish  citizens,  as  the  introduction  of  the 
imperial  eagles  into  the  holy  city  and  the  massacre  of 
the  Galileans  showed.^  And  the  priests,  as  the  men  who 
best  knew  and  most  feared  him,  would  be  sure  to  dread 
and  seek  to  repress  every  sign  of  discontent  or  incipient 
disturbance.  They  would  judge  as  men  whose  seats 
were  insecure  and  whose  security  depended  on  the  prompt 
severity   of  their  judgments.      And   this   is   one   of  the 

I  The  violence  and  craft  of  these  families  is  specially  lamented  in 
the  Talmud.  See  text  in  Derenbourg,  Essai  stcr  VHistohe  et  la  Geo. 
gro.phie  de  la  Palestine^  pp.  232,  233.  See  also  Geiger,  Ursclu-ift  und 
Vebersetzungen  der  Bibel,  p.  no. 

'  Jos.,  Atitt.j  xviii.  3.  I ;  B.  j.  ii.  9.  2.  3  ;  Luke  xiii.  i. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL.  293 

features  of  their  sect  Josephus  specially  emphasizes  :  the 
Sadducees  were  much  severer  as  Judges  than  the  Pharisees. 
And  this  is  no  less  apparent  in  the  New  Testament.  It 
is  a  man  of  the  Pharisees  who  speaks  in  the  council  in 
defence  of  Jesus,  and  on  these  grounds :  "  Doth  our  law 
judge  any  man  before  it  hear  him  ? "  '  It  is  a  man 
of  the  same  sect  who  pleads  that  it  is  better  to  leave  the 
Apostles  alone,  and  to  the  judgment  of  God.^  It  is  to 
the  Pharisees  that  Paul  appeals  as  against  the  Sadducees, 
and  not  in  vain.^  If  the  Pharisees  could  not  persuade 
they  would  not  persecute  :  it  is  the  priests  and  Sadducees 
alone  that  harass  and  distress  the  Church  in  Jerusalem. 
And  the  reason  is  obvious ;  the  sincerity  of  the  Pharisees 
made  them  mild,  the  policy  of  the  priests  made  them 
severe.  The  former  could  not  invoke  Caesar  without 
denying  their  faith;  the  latter  must  please  Caesar  or  lose 
office  and  influence.  The  man  faithful  to  principle  is  never 
cruel ;  the  victim  of  expediency  always  is. 

These  men,  then,  find  themselves  suddenly  confronted 
by  Christ,  forced  to  judge  as  to  His  claims,  and  decide 
how  to  act  in  relation  to  Him.  The  situation  is  complex 
and  critical.  He  has  entered  the  city  amid  exulting 
and  expectant  enthusiasm.  He  speaks  and  acts  like  one 
having  authority,  not  now  simply  against  the  hated 
Pharisees,  but  also  against  the  priests.  He  invades  the 
temple,  deals  sharply  with  their  vested  interests,  declares 
Himself  the  foe  of  the  old  and  the  founder  of  a  new  order. 
His  ideas  of  worship  contradict  theirs,  and  threaten  to 
abolish  sacrifice,  priesthood,  and  temple.  And  He  does 
not  belong  to  their  class,  is  of  no  priestly  stock,  is  without 
hierarchic  notion  or  reverence,  has  lived  without  respect 
to  their  ritual  and  their  sacerdotal  laws.  They  have  found  it 

'  John  vii.  51.  And  to  the  same  sect  the  one  dissentient  in  the 
Sanhedrin  that  condemned  Jesus  (Luke  xxiii.  51). 

»  Acts  V.  34-40.  3  Ibid,  xxiii.  6^  7. 


294         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

impossible  to  vanquish  Him  by  ominous  speech,  or  dark 
looks,  or  open  and  violent  reproofs.  The  people  believe 
on  Him,  wait  on  His  every  word,  watch  His  every  act. 
Miracles  have  made  Him  marvellous,  and  to  excited  hope 
He  is  the  Messiah,  the  Redeemer  who  is  to  deliver 
them  from  their  later  and  most  hateful  captivity.  And 
the  muliitude  is  immense.  Jerusalem  alone  might  be 
managed,  but  Jerusalem  is  not  alone.  Israel  is  there, 
men  out  of  all  Judaea  and  Galilee,  Jews  from  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth.  The  strangers  are  stirred  by 
the  strange  news,  expectancy  and  wonder  are  abroad,  and 
men  feel  their  spirits  thrilled  by  the  presence  of  hopes  that 
had  seemed  too  glorious  to  be  realized.  And  in  the  heart 
of  the  city  the  abomination  of  desolation  stands ;  over 
It  there  floats  the  ensign  of  Rome.  Always  a  bitter  sight, 
it  was  made  far  more  bitter  by  being  in  Jerusalem  and  at 
the  feast,  when  Israel  came  to  confess  his  faith  and 
realize  his  unity  and  mission.  But  to  the  men  who  found 
by  the  coming  of  Jesus  their  Messianic  hopes  kindled 
into  burning  passion  and  desire,  it  must  have  seemed  an 
affront  hardly  to  be  borne,  an  hourly  provocation  to 
revolt.  And  Pilate,  suspicious,  cruel,  unscrupulous,  was 
in  his  palace  watching  all,  ready  to  let  loose  his  legions 
and  begin  the  work  Rome  but  too  well  knew  how  to  do 
when  dealing  with  a  subject  people  that  would  rebel.  All 
this  the  priests  divined  and  understood  ;  but  what  was  to 
be  done  ?  Rebellion  simply  meant  destruction ;  it  yet 
seemed  inevitable  if  Jesus  were  spared.  *'  If  we  let  Him 
thus  alone,  all  men  will  believe  on  Him ;  and  the  Romans 
shall  come  and  take  away  both  our  place  and  nation." ' 
They  had  no  concern  with  His  claims,  only  with  their 
own  safety.  They  knew  Him  as  at  once  the  enemy  of 
their  order,  temple,  and  worship,  and  the  cause  of  all 
those  dangerous  and  explosive  hopes.  The  case  was  one 
'  John  xi.  48. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL.  295 

where  Caiaphas'  craft  was  sure  to  seem  wisdom.  He 
went  right  to  what  they  thought  the  heart  of  the  matter 
when  he  said  to  the  council,  "Ye  know  nothing  at  all, 
nor  consider  that  it  is  expedient  for  us,  that  one  man  die 
for  the  people,  and  that  the  whole  nation  perish  noi."  ' 
There  was  no  need  to  name  the  "  one  man."  The  men 
who  ruled  by  pleasure  of  the  Roman  would  sacrifice  the 
greatest  Person  of  their  race  that  the  Roman  might  be 
pleased  and  they  allowed  to  live. 

To  decide  was  to  act;  promptitude  was  necessary  to 
success  :  the  people  must  be  surprised  into  connivance, 
and  Rome  into  judicial  approval  and  action.  The  priests 
proceed  with  wonderful  courage  and  tact.  The  first  thing 
is  to  get  Christ  into  their  power.  Captivity  will  break 
the  spell  that  binds  the  people  to  Him,  and  may  even 
change  them  into  enemies.  By  the  grace  of  Judas  the 
first  step  is  taken.  In  the  still  night  Jesus  is  seized  and 
carried  bound  to  the  palace  of  the  high  priesr.  There  all 
was  wakefulness ;  and,  though  yet  in  the  night,  a  council 
was  summoned.  While  it  was  being  got  together,  Annas, 
the  head  of  the  reigning  house,  saw  and  examined  Him. 
This  is  one  of  the  finely  significant  details  we  owe  to 
John,  the  more  historical  and  vivid  that  it  is  so  un- 
expected. Yet,  once  the  situation  is  comprehended, 
nothing  is  more  probable.  Annas  was  in  all  likelihood 
the  oldest  past  chief  priest.  Appointed  in  the  year  6 
after  Christ,  his  family  had  ever  since,  with  a  break  of 
only  two  years,  held  office.  The  old  man  was  subtle;  his 
was  the  serpent's  brood,  theirs,  as  the  Talmud  says,  the 
serpent's  hiss.^  Where  the  family  had  managed  so 
excellently,  its  founder  was  sure  to  come  by  his  honour. 
In  the  inner  circle  he  could  not  but  remain  the  high 
priest,  though  to  the  city  and  people  the  son-in-law  filled 
the  office.  So  John,  with  most  conscious  verbal  incon- 
*  John  xi.  50.  ■  Derenbourg,  ut  supra^  p.  292. 


296  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

sistency,  but  most  significant  accuracy,  names  now 
Annas  and  now  Caiaphas  high  priest.^  And  the  private 
process  before  this  patriarch — reckoned  happiest  of  men 
because  the  man  with  most  sons  in  the  priesthood — was 
most  characteristic.  The  subtle  old  man  used  his  oppor- 
tunity dexterously.  He  **  asked  Jesus  of  His  disciples 
and  of  His  doctrine."  These  were  the  very  points  on 
which  a  little  knowledge,  privately  gained,  was  sure  to 
be  most  helpful  at  the  trial  and  after  it.  For  what  pur- 
pose had  He  organized  a  school,  what  sort  of  men  formed 
it,  how  many  were  they,  and  what,  without  their  head, 
would  they  be  likely  to  attempt  or  do  ?  In  what  prin- 
ciples had  He  instructed  them  ?  What  did  He  think, 
how  had  He  spoken,  of  the  scribes,  the  priests,  Rome  ? 
But  Jesus  declined  to  satisfy  his  astute  curiosity.  He 
had  formed  no  secret  society ;  what  He  had  spoken  to 
His  disciples  He  had  spoken  **  openly  to  the  world." 
He  had  no  secret  doctrine ;  had  taught  in  the  most 
public  places,  in  synagogues,  in  the  temple.  Let  those 
who  heard  be  asked  ;  they  knew  what  had  been  said. 
The  answer  was  offensive  because  so  mild,  yet  true,  and 
the  reply  to  it  was  a  blow  from  one  of  the  attendants. 
The  master  is  known  by  his  servants,  the  priest  by  his 
ministers. 

But  now  the  hastily  summoned  council  is  ready,  and 
the  captive  is  led  bound  into  its  presence.  The  judges  sit 
in  a  semicircle,  Caiaphas  in  the  midst,  before  them  the 
accused,  at  either  end  of  the  crescent  the  clerks  or  secre- 
taries. A  judicial  process  was  necessary,  and  the  priests 
were  masters  enough  of  legal  forms  to  use  them  for  illegal 
ends.  Christ  is  there  alone;  no  friend  beside  Him,  no 
advocate  to  speak  for  Him,  no  opportunity  granted  to  call 
witnesses  in  His  defence.  But  what  need  of  defence  ? 
No  charge  is  as  yet  formulated ;  He  is  being  tried  for  a 
John  xviii.  13,  19. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL.  297 

crime  that  has  yet  to  be  discovered.  He  is  an  accused 
without  an  accuser,  or  rather,  with  only  accusers  and  no 
judge.  In  their  hour  of  need  why  did  they  not  call  the 
traitor?  He  had  known  Christ,  had  heard  His  most  con- 
fidential words  and  doctrines,  and  so  might  have  helped 
them  to  frame  a  charge.  But  he  had  done  his  work,  and 
it  was  now  doing  a  most  unexpected  work  in  him.  It  was 
not  ill  to  find  witnesses,  but  it  was  not  easy  to  make  their 
testimonies  agree,  or  agreeable  to  the  purposes  of  the  pro- 
secuting judges.^  But  at  last  two  witnesses  came  who 
said,  *'  He  said,  *  I  am  able  to  destroy  the  temple  of  God, 
and  to  build  it  in  three  days.'  "  This  seemed  enough  for 
the  council ;  it  could  be  made  to  prove  Him  a  plotter 
against  the  existing  order,  an  enemy  to  the  worship  and 
law  of  his  people.  Tlie  witnesses  had,  indeed,  changed 
His  saying.  He  said,  "  Destroy  " — the  destruction  was  to 
be  their  work,  not  His — "  and  I  will  build  it  up  in  three 
days."  It  was  a  parable,  too ;  a  speech  which  showed  in 
symbol  the  destructive  work  they  were  daily  doing,  and 
the  restorative  work  He  was  victoriously  to  achieve.  But 
as  they  took  it,  it  was,  remarkably  enough,  the  gravest 
charge  they  could  formulate.  Out  of  all  the  words  He 
had  spoken  and  works  He  had  done  they  could  find  no 
graver.  They  could  not  charge  Him  with  violation  of  the 
Sabbath  law  without  approving  the  interpretations  of  their 
old  enemies,  the  Pharisees.  They  could  not  charge  Him 
with  violent  conduct  in  purifying  the  temple,  for  it  was 
precisely  conduct  all  the  Pharisees  and  zealots  would  ap- 
prove. They  could  not  prove  that  the  triumphal  entry  had 
had  any  political' origin  or  purpose,  for  He  had  not  used  it 
or  made  to  it  any  public  reference.  His  denunciations  of 
the  Pharisees  they  could  not  condemn ;  nor  in  His  dis- 
courses in  the  city  could  they  find  matter  to  their  mind. 
The  utmost  they  could  do  was  to  build  on  this  poor  per- 

'  Mark  xiv.  55-59 ;  Matt.  xxvi.  59-61, 
20 


298  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

verted  misinterpreted  saying,  ''  I  am  able  to  destroy  the 
temple  of  God  and  build  it  in  three  days." 

The  priest  must  be  careful  of  the  temple  ;  so  it  was  with 
the  air  of  one  whose  very  heart  was  touched  that  Caiaphas 
demanded,  "  Answerest  thou  nothing  ?  What  is  it  which 
these  witness  against  thee  ?  "  ^  But  Jesus,  with  serene 
dignity,  "  held  His  peace."  Before  expediency,  imitating 
justice  that  it  might  the  better  work  its  unjust  will.  He 
could  not  condescend  to  plead  ;  speech  had  only  dealt  with 
the  semblance  as  if  it  were  reality.  In  His  silence  there 
was  a  majesty  that  awed  the  council,  and  though  now  was 
the  moment  for  the  high  priest  to  gather  and  declare  its 
mind,  Caiaphas  was  too  crafty  to  do  so.  He  could  not 
condemn  and  he  would  not  acquit,  and  so,  with  the  cun- 
ning of  his  house,  he  resolved  to  change  his  method.  He 
would  enlist  on  their  side  the  honour,  the  conscious  king- 
hood,  of  the  Victim  they  had  doomed  to  death.  So  in  the 
name  of  the  Holiest  he  appealed  to  Jesus  to  declare  who 
and  what  He  was — **  I  adjure  thee  by  the  living  God  that 
thou  tell  us  whether  thou  be  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God." 
Silence  was  not  now  possible  to  Jesus.  He  could  not  be 
unfaithful  to  Himself,  or  to  the  Name  which  had  been  in- 
voked. "  I  am,"  He  said.  The  consciousness  of  His 
Messiahship  was  never  serener  and  stronger  than  now. 
In  His  hour  of  deepest  humiliation  He  was  most  con- 
sciously the  King;  in  the  moment  of  utmost  loneliness 
and  desertion  He  knew  Himself  the  Son  of  God,  and  feared 
not,  even  before  the  priestly  council,  to  complete  His  con- 
fession. "  Ye  shall  see  the  Son  of  man  sitting  on  the 
right  hand  of  power  and  coming  in  the  clouds  of  heaven." 

The  high  priest  well  knew  what  the  words  meant.     Into 

the  one  phrase — "  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God  " — the  hopes 

of  a  Psalm,2  dear  to  Judaism  for  the  victory  and  dominion 

it   promised,   were   expressed ;    into   the   other  the  high 

'  Mark  xiv.  60,  61  ;  Matt.  xxvi.  62  63.  2  Psa.  ii.  7-12. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL,         299 

apocalyptic  dreams  of  Daniel  were  condensed.'  In  His 
soul  He  had  little  regard  to  either.  They  belonged  to  the 
things  in  which  the  Pharisees  gloried,  on  which  the  zealots 
lived.  He  had  seen  many  enthusiasts  live  and  die,  had 
often  seen  the  fanaticism  created  by  the  ancient  Messianic 
hopes  break  into  useless  rebellion  and  perish  in  blood. 
The  man  of  expediency  regards  enthusiasm  with  cold  and 
cynical  scorn,  while  the  child  of  enthusiasm  regards  ex- 
pediency with  blind  and  passionate  hate.  But  in  the  hate 
there  is  more  intelligence  than  in  the  scorn.  Caiaphas 
could  not  distinguish  between  a  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and  a 
Judas  of  Gamala,  did  not  dream  that  the  confession  he  had 
heard  was  to  be  the  symbol  of  a  New  Religion,  wherein 
man  was  to  become  consciously  the  Son  of  God,  and  God 
to  be  loved  as  the  Father  of  man.  All  he  knew  was  that 
his  subtlety  had  succeeded.  In  claiming  to  be  the  Son  of 
God,  Jesus  could  be  charged  with  blasphemy  under  the  law 
of  Moses;  in  claiming  to  be  the  Messiah,  He  could  be  re- 
presented as  denying  the  authority  of  Caesar  and  setting 
up  as  the  Jewish  king.  So,  happy  in  his  exultant  horror, 
the  priest  rose,  rent  his  clothes,  and  cried,  "What  further 
need  have  we  of  witnesses  ?  Lo,  ye  have  heard  the  blas- 
phemy !  What  think  ye  ?  "  And  the  response  came,  clear 
and  unanimous,  *'  He  is  worthy  of  death  !  "  * 

Over  the  scene  that  followed  it  is  well  to  draw  the  veil. 
Leaving  the  men  who  had  the  heart  so  to  spit  and  buffet 
One  so  meek  and  guileless,  let  us  watch  a  scene  proceeding 
in  the  court  below.  There  a  fire  was  burning,  and  its  lurid 
light  fell  upon  a  circle  of  faces  pressing  round  to  share  its 
warmth.  Into  the  court  love  had  drawn  two  disciples. 
Peter  was  one,  and,  chilled  by  his  sleep  in  Gethsemane, 
he  stood  forward  to  warm  himself.  The  flame  fell  on  his 
face,  and  a  serving-maid,  recognizing  the  strongly  marked 
features,  said  in  the  hearing  of  the  coarse  and  truculent 

*  Dan.  vii.  13,  14,  22.  "  Mark  xiv.  63,  64;  Matt.  xxvi.  64,  65. 


300  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

band,  doubtless  discussing,  in  the  brutal  manner  of  their 
class,  the  terror  in  which  "  all  had  forsook  Him  and  fled," 
"  Thou  also  wast  with  Jesus  of  Nazareth."  The  sudden 
charge  was  too  much  for  Peter's  ebbing  courage,  and  he 
denied  that  he  knew  the  Man.  Withdrawing  into  the 
shade  to  escape  further  notice,  he  only  stumbled  upon 
another  recognition  and  into  another  denial.  Wretched, 
out  of  heart  and  hope,  yet  held  by  his  very  misery  to  the 
spot,  he  was  not  equal  to  a  third  recognition,  and  denied 
with  cursing.  But  just  at  that  moment  a  calm  eye  met 
his,  and  the  passion  changed  into  penitence,  the  cursing 
into  tears.  That  night  the  silent  heaven  looked  down  on 
two  men,  the  one  driven  by  a  tearless  remorse  and  the 
burning  stain  of  innocent  blood  on  his  conscience  to  seek 
the  awful  consolation  of  death;  the  other  led  by  the  tender- 
ness of  denied  yet  Divine  love  to  tearful  penitence  and  a 
nobler  life.  Without  Peter  the  penitent  we  might  never 
have  had  Peter  the  apostle.  The  love  that  impelled  him 
to  follow  Christ  was  mightier  than  the  shame  that  sur- 
prised him  into  the  denial.  He  rose  by  falling.  The 
event  that  showed  him  his  own  weakness  also  revealed  the 
secret  of  stability  and  strength. 

In  the  morning,  "  as  soon  as  it  was  day,"  ^  the  full 
Sanhedrin  met.  The  proceedings  of  the  council  that  had 
sat  over-night  had  to  be  revised  and  ratified.  Without 
this  these  could  have  no  validity.  Judaism  was  at  least 
merciful,  and  provided  that  the  criminal  should  be  tried  by 
day  and  condemned  by  day ;  but,  that  temper  might  not 
control  judgment,  he  was  not  to  be  condemned  on  the  day 
on  which  his  trial  began.  But  the  scruples  of  the  scribes 
did  not  trouble  the  Sadducees,  especially  when  commanded 
by  expediency.  The  process  begun  by  night  was  ended  in 
morning.  The  session  was  short,  the  witnesses  were  not 
called,  the  confession  was  not  repeated,  there  was  no  dis- 
*  Mark  xv.  i  ;  Luke  xxii.  66. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— J  HE  TRIAL,  301 

cussion  as  to  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  Jesus.  The  only 
question  was,  What  shall  be  done  with  Him  ?  The  priests 
were  too  adroit  to  hesitate.  The  sooner  He  y^as  in  the 
hands  of  the  Procurator  the  safer  they  would  be.  While 
they  held  Him,  there  was  no  sayin^:^  what  the  people  might 
do ;  once  He  was  in  the  power  of  Rome  disbelief  would  be 
universal — no  one  would  believe  in  a  Messiah  who  could 
not  resist  the  Gentile.  The  Pharisees  might  dislike  asking 
Rome  to  punish  an  offender  against  their  own  law,  but 
the  Sadducees  were  not  so  nice  of  conscience,  knew  that 
Rome,  and  not  they,  had  the  power  of  life  and  death.  So 
the  council  resolved  to  deliver  Jesus  to  the  Governor. 

In  Pilate  there  appears  the  character  that  was  needed 
to  make  the  tragedy  complete.  In  him  Heathenism  as  it 
then  was  lived,  and  now,  side  by  side  with  Judaism,  con- 
fronted Christ,  each  asking  the  other  what  was  to  be 
done  with  Him,  each  helping  the  other  by  deepening  His 
present  shame  to  heighten  His  ultimate  glory.  Three 
religions  here  stood  face  to  face,  two  of  the  past  and  one 
of  the  future.  The  religions  of  the  past  were  exhausted, 
hollow,  and  unreal,  but  the  religion  of  the  future  a  thing 
of  infinite  promise  and  potency.  Pride  and  strength  seemed 
to  belong  to  the  old,  humiliation  and  weakness  to  the  new; 
but  within  the  old  the  merciless  forces  of  decay  and  dis- 
integration were  at  work,  while  within  the  new  germinative 
and  organizing  energies  were  generously  active.  The 
persons  that  act  in  this  drama  but  veil  great  principles, 
and  help  us  to  see  how  the  evil,  even  where  most  victorious 
over  the  good,  may  be  only  the  more  working  its  own 
.  defeat,  and  fulfilling  the  Divine  purpose. 

Pilate  was,  so  far  as  he  stands  revealed  in  Christian 
and  Jewish  history,  a  true  child  of  the  Roman  Empiie  in 
its  period  of  insolence  and  victorious  aggression.  His 
was  precisely  the  kind  of  character  sure  to  be  formed 
under  the  combined  influences  of  its  conquests  and  cos- 


302  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

mopolitanism.  Few  races  can  bear  conquest  undepraved  ; 
the  subject  often  suffers  less  than  the  subjecting  people. 
The  man  who  rules  the  men  his  kinsmen  have  vanquished 
is  prone  to  regard  them  as  a  lower  race,  made  of  poorer 
and  feebler  stuff  than  his  own.  And  where  the  ruler  so 
regards  the  ruled,  justice  is  impossible  ;  his  administration 
will  be  too  thoroughly  penetrated  by  his  own  spirit  to  be, 
where  most  regular  or  legal,  altogether  just.  And  this 
radical  evil  vitiated  the  Roman  rule.  What  was  wise  and 
generous  in  it  was  perverted  and  poisoned  by  the  men  it 
employed  ;  and  they  by  the  false  attitude  they  occupied. 
The  only  remedy  for  the  evil  was  the  complete  incorpora- 
tion of  the  provinces  with  the  empire ;  but  this  was  less 
possible  in  its  earlier  than  in  its  golden  period,  the  days 
of  Hadrian  and  the  Antonines.  Rome  was  tolerant  of 
national  institutions,  but  national  instincts  and  institu- 
tions were  not  always  tolerant  of  Rome.  And  where  they 
were  recalcitrant  she  was  severe  ;  and  where  the  subject 
was  an  insubordinate  race,  too  weak  to  rebel,  too  proud  to 
be  submissive,  too  tenacious  of  its  own  will  and  customs 
to  love  Rome,  there  her  ruler  would  find  his  task  the 
heaviest — exercise  and  apology  for  qualities  imperial  rather 
than  regal  or  legal.  Then  while  conquest  depraved,  cos- 
mopolitanism enervated,  weakened  the  faith  that  had 
created  the  moral  and  political  ideals  of  Rome.  As  the 
Roman  came  to  know  many  peoples  he  came  to  know  as 
many  religions  ;  each  believed  within  its  own  circle,  un- 
known or  disbelieved  beyond  it.  To  his  rigorous  practical 
intelligence  the  main  matter  in  each  was  its  political 
significance.  All  could  not  be  true,  none  had  a  universal 
truth,  and  each  served  a  local  purpose  and  had  a  particular 
use.  A  religion  had  only  to  be  national  to  be  recognized 
at  Rome  ;  she  tolerated  all  that  she  might  the  better  rule 
all  peoples.  The  inevitable  consequence  was  the  one  so 
well  stated  by  Gibbon — while  all  religions  were  to  the 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL,  303 

people  equally  true,  they  were  to  the  philosopher  equally 
false,  to  the  magistrate  equally  useful. 

And  Pilate  was  in  these  respects  a  true  Roipan  magis- 
trate. His  attitude  to  the  Jews  is  expressed  in  the  history 
of  his  government,  his  careless  sacrifice  of  life,  his  insolent 
affronts  to  their  deepest  and  dearest  convictions.  His 
attitude  to  religion  is  expressed  in  the  question,  asked  in 
cynical  impatience,  "  What  is  truth?  "  ^  meaning,  "  What 
is  your  truth  to  me  ?  Fools  may  reason  about  it,  states- 
men cannot  rule  by  it ;  he  but  Vastes  his  time  who  seeks 
it."  To  such  a  man  the  Jews  were  an  insoluble  problem, 
and  their  religious  discussions  and  differences  an  irritating 
trouble.  He  had  come  from  Caesarea  to  Jerusalem  be- 
cause of  the  feast.  The  multitudes  were  dangerous  and 
discontented,  and  he  had  to  be  there  at  once  to  overawe 
the  people  and  administer  justice.  His  memories  of  the  city 
were  unpleasant.  He  had  been  truculent,  but  they  fanati- 
cal, and  his  truculence  had  been  defiedand  mastered  by  their 
fanaticism.  And  he  finds  them  again  agitated  and  fierce 
over  these  religious  differences  of  theirs.  And,  what  is 
worse,  they  evidently  mean  to  draw  him  into  their  disputes, 
and  use  his  authority  for  their  sectarian  ends.  The  priests 
had  got  soldiers  the  night  before  to  capture  a  Man  who 
was  no  political  offender,  and  now  here  in  the  early  morn- 
ing they  are  bringing  Him  to  the  Praetorium.^  Their 
conduct  is  irritating,  a  succession  of  small  yet  exasperating 
offences  to  a  hard,  vain  man  like  Pilate.  They  send  their 
Victim  into  the  Prsetorium,  but  they  themselves  will  not 
enter.  They  are  but  Jewish  priests,  yet  would  feel  defiled 
by  contact  with  the  majesty  of  Rome.  They  wish  him  to 
work  their  will,  but  he  has  to  go  out  to  speak  with  them : 
they,  for  reasons  he  must  as  a  governor  respect,  and  as 
a  man  despise,  refuse  to  plead  in  the  hall  of  judgment. 
His  feeiing  of  impatient  and  fretful  contempt  is  expressed 
•  Jonnxvm.  ^8.  *  Ibid,  xviii.  28-32. 


304  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

in  the  question,  "  What  accusation  bring  ye  against  cins 
man  ?  "  They  attempt,  by  standing  on  their  dignity,  to  carry 
their  point  at  once  :  '*  We  deliver  Him  to  thee ;  that  is  proof 
enough  of  His  guilt."  He,  determined  not  to  be  their  tool 
or  any  friend  to  their  factions,  stands  on  his  authority  and 
legal  rights.  **  If  I  do  not  try  Him,  I  will  not  execute 
Him.  Judge  Him  according  to  your  law."  They,  forced 
to  feel  that  as  they  have  no  power  to  inflict  they  have  no 
right  to  award  the  last  penalty,  have  to  submit  their  whole 
case  to  Pilate.  But  the. new  is  not  the  old  indictment; 
it  is  skilfully  modified  and  enlarged  into  what  seems  a 
capital  offence,  whether  measured  by  the  law  of  Judaea  or 
Rome.  The  charges  are  three — He  has  corrupted  the 
nation,  has  forbidden  to  give  tribute  to  Caesar,  and  has 
claimed  to  be  King  Messiah.^  Pilate,  having  heard  their 
charge,  returns  to  examine  Christ.  He  asks,  seizing 
the  cardinal  point  for  him,  '*  Art  Thou  the  King  of  the 
Jews  ?  "  *  But  the  question  is  not  so  easily  answered  ;  it 
may  admit  of  either  a  yes  or  a  no.  So  Jesus  wishes  to 
know  whose  it  is — Pilate's  or  the  Jews'  ?  Pilate  declares 
ignorance ;  he  knows  but  what  he  has  been  told ;  he 
would  never  have  imagined  that  the  Person  before  him 
could  claim  to  be  a  king.  Then  Jesus  breaks  into  a 
wonderful  exposition  of  His  kinghood  and  kingdom — "My 
kingdom  is  not  of  this  world.  If  My  kingdom  were  of  this 
world,  then  would  My  servants  have  fought  that  I  should 
not  be  delivered  to  the  Jews  ;  but  now  is  My  kingdom  not 
from  hence."  And  Pilate,  anxious  to  reach  what  was  for 
him  the  root  of  the  matter,  asks,  "Art  Thou  a  king,  then  ?" 
Jesus  answered,  "  Thou  sayest  that  I  am  a  king.  To  this 
end  was  I  born,  and  for  this  cause  came  I  into  the  world, 
that  I  should  bear  witness  unto  the  truth.  Every  one 
that  is  of  the  truth  heareth  My  voice." 

These  words  are  so  remarkable,  and  form  so  striking  a 
»  Luke  xxiii.  2.  *  John  xvii.  33-38. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL,  305 

contrast  to  the  sayings  and  conduct  of  Christ,  as  given  in 
the  Synoptics,  that  their  authenticity  has  been  amply 
doubted.  But  comparison  with  the  synoptic  narratives 
confirms  rather  than  invalidates  their  truth.  It  is  evident 
from  all  the  Gospels  that  Pilate  condemned  Jesus  most 
reluctantly,  or  rather,  refused  to  condemn  Him,  and 
allowed  Him  to  be  crucified  only  to  please  the  Jews.  He 
could  not  be  made  to  believe  in  His  guilt,  believed  instead 
that  He  was  the  victim  of  factious  and  unjust  hate, 
struggled  hard  to  save  Him,  and  yielded  simply  to  avoid  a 
tumult.  Now  how  had  Pilate  been  so  deeply  impressed 
in  favour  of  Jesus  ?  Why  so  strongly  convinced  that  the 
Jewish  clamour  was  utterly  unreasonable  ?  Simple  pity 
cannot  explain  it.  He  had  seen  too  much  to  be  easily 
touched,  and  was  too  much  of  a  Roman  to  be  ruled  by 
sentiment.  And  where  political  claims  and  fiscal  agita- 
tion were  concerned  he  could  be  as  pitiless  as  any  of  his 
class.  But  grant  this  interview,  and  all  is  plain.  These 
words  would  make  on  Pilate  the  impression  of  innocence 
unsurpassed.  They  would  seem  to  him  like  the  speech  of 
a  child,  a  simple  and  unworldly  idealist,  too  remote  from 
the  politics  and  concerns  of  life  to  be  a  trouble  in  the  State. 
He  knew  the  Jews,  right  well  understood  the  kind  of  men 
that  disguised  policy  in  religion.  But  this  was  not  one  of 
them.  His  speech  was  without  worldliness,  a  sweet  and 
limpid  idealism,  no  sour  and  impracticable  fanaticism,  and 
must  be  offensive  to  the  Jews  for  reasons  that  concerned 
their  superstition  and  in  noway  concerned  Rome,  which  they 
did  not  love.  And  so  the  governor  tried  to  save  the  Christ. 
He  first  pronounced  Him  innocent,  but  only  to  hear  the 
chief  priests  the  more  fiercely  charge  Him  with  corrupting 
the  people  from  Galilee  to  Jerusalem.^  Then,  anxious  to  be 
rid  of  the  matter,  he  sent  Him  to  Herod.  But  Herod,  with 
the  cruel  and  self-indulgent  spirit  of  his  race,  only  made 

*  Luke  xxiii.  5-1 1. 


3o6  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

sport  out  of  the  Sufferer,  and  sent  Him  back  derisively 
arrayed  to  Pilate.  With  Jesus  once  more  on  his  hands, 
the  governor  was  forced  to  assume  the  responsibilities 
involved  in  judgment.  He  did  not  wish  to  sacrifice  Jesus, 
but  still  less  did  he  wish  to  risk  a  tumult.  So  he  tried  to 
avoid  both  by  a  mean  expedient.  Should  he — addressing 
the  excited  multitude  now  gathered  before  his  palace,  and 
skilfully  fomented  into  vindictiveness  against  Him  who 
had  deceived  them  into  the  thought  that  He  was  Messiah 
— should  he,  as  they  were  accustomed  to  an  act  of  grace 
at  the  feast,  release  unto  them  the  king  of  the  Jews  ?  But 
"the  chief  priests  moved  the  people**  to  cry,  *' Not  this 
man,  but  Bar-Abbas."  '  By  this  appeal  to  the  crowd  the 
control  of  events  passed  from  the  hands  of  Pilate. 
Passion  now  reigned ;  the  only  question  was,  how  long 
he  would  hold  out,  and  how  best  it  could  compel  him  to 
yield.  He  ordered  Jesus  to  be  scourged,  clad  in  the 
symbols  of  mock  royalty,  and  then  showed  Him,  bleeding 
and  humiliated,  a  spectacle  calculated  to  awaken  pity  and 
satisfy  revenge.  But  the  only  response  was  the  cry, 
''  Crucify  Him,  crucify  Him  !  *'  *  If  they  would  have  it, 
then  they  must  know  the  guilt  was  theirs.  He  would  not 
condemn  Him  ;  He  would  remain  "  innocent  of  the  blood 
of  this  just  person.'*  But  the  guilt  they  were  ready  to 
assume :  "  His  blood  be  on  us  and  on  our  children.*'  3 
"  Shall  I,"  then  said  he,  now  willing  to  execute  any  sen- 
tence they  might  determine,  "  crucify  your  king  ?  "  And 
they,  sealing  their  national  crime  by  national  infidelity, 
shouted,  *'  Crucify  Him  !  we  have  no  king  but  Caesar."  ^ 

And  so  the  conflict  of  the  three  religions  ended;  the 
Christ  who  held  the  future  was  to  be  crucified  by  the  pas- 
sion of  sacerdotal  Judaism  and  the  weakness  of  cosmopoli- 
tan Heathenism.     The  tragic  story  is  a  parable  in  action. 

»  Mark  xv.  II.  *  John  xix.  4-6.         3  Matt,  xxvii.  24,  25. 

4  John  xix.  15. 


THE  CHIEF  PRIESTS— THE  TRIAL,  307 

The  religion  of  Israel  falsified  by  priests,  perverted  from  a 
service  of  the  living  God  into  a  sensuous  w^orship,  where 
the  symbol  superseded  the  reality,  the  temple  overshadov^ed 
the  God,  and  the  hierarch  supplanted  His  law,  could  find 
no  love  in  its  heart,  no  reverence  in  its  will,  for  the  holiest 
Person  of  the  race  :  met  Him  not  as  the  fruition  of  its 
hopes  and  the  end  of  its  being,  but  as  the  last  calamity  of 
its  life,  a  being  that  must  perish  that  it  might  live.     The 
religion  of  the  Gentile,  penetrated  and  transformed  by  the 
thought  of  Greece  and  the  political  ideal  of  Rome,  stood 
between  Judaism  and  Christ,  saw  its  want  of  the  holy  and 
hate  of  the  good;  saw,  too,  His  innocence,  the  beauty  that 
made  His  marred  visage  winsome,  and  His  ideal  of  man- 
hood sweetly  reasonable ;  but  it  had  not  heart  enough  to 
love  the  Christ,  had  not  even  conscience  enough  to  compel 
the  Jew  to  forego  his  hate  and  love  his  King.     And  between 
these  there  is  the  religion  of  Christ,  which  is  the  religion  of 
man  and  his  future,  made  the  victim  of  their  vices,  sacri- 
ficed, as  it  might  seem,  to  their  blended  hate  and  impotence. 
But   His  death  is  its  life.     Christ   is    like    a    holy    and 
beautiful  being  bruised  and  broken  by  the  collision  of  two 
brutal   forces   that  cannot   understand  the   sanctity  and 
loveliness  of  Him  they  have  destroyed,  but  they  bruised 
Him  only  that  there  might  escape  from  Him  a  fragrance 
that  has  sweetened  the  air  of  the  world,  made  it  for  all 
time  and  for  all  men  balmier  and  more  healthful,  like  a 
diffused  celestial  presence,  the  very  breath  of  God  passing 
over  the  earth  and  abiding  on  it.     His  kingdom  was  not 
of  this  worldt  and   in    its    unworldliness   has    lived    its 
permanence  and  power.     While  the  empires  of  Augustus 
and  Constantine,  of  Charlemagne  and  Barbarossa,  of  the 
Frank  and  the  Teuton,  have  flourished  and  perished,  the 
kingdom  of  Christ  has  widened  with  the  ages,  strengthened 
with  the  truth,  and  now  lives  in  the  heart  of  humanity,  the 
one  presence  of  infinite  promise  and  hopefulness  and  love. 


XVIL 

THE  CRUCIFIXION. 

The  cro^s  of  Christ,  as  if  it  were  the  glittering  eye  of  God, 
has  in  a  most  wondrous  way  held  man  spell-bound,  and 
made  him  listen  to  its  strange  story  "  like  a  three  years' 
child  "  who  "  cannot  choose  but  hear."  Were  not  the  fact 
so  familiar,  men  would  call  it  miraculous.  Had  its  action 
and  history  been  capable  of  a  priori  statement,  it  would 
have  seemed,  even  to  the  most  credulous  age,  the  maddest 
of  mad  and  unsubstantial  dreams.  For  it  is  not  only  that 
in  the  immense  history  of  human  experience  it  stands 
alone,  a  fact  without  a  fellow,  the  most  potent  factor  of 
human  good,  yet  with  what  seems  the  least  inherent  fit- 
ness for  it,  but  it  even  appears  to  contradict  the  most  cer- 
tain and  common  principles  man  has  deduced  from  his 
experience.  We  do  not  wonder  at  the  cross  having  been 
a  stumbling-block  to  the  Jew  and  foolishness  to  the  Greek. 
We  should  have  wondered  much  more  had  it  been  any- 
thing else.  In  the  cross  by  itself  there  was  nothing  to 
dignify,  and  everything  to  deprave.  Men  would  at  first 
interpret  it  rather  by  its  old  associations  than  its  new 
meaning.  It  had  by  its  positive  achievemeifts  to  prove  its 
pecuHar  significance  and  merit  before  it  could  make  out 
an  indefeasible  claim  on  man's  rational  regard.  But  the 
extraordinary  thing  was  how,  with  its  ancient  obloquy  and 
intrinsic  unsuitableness  to  its  destined  end,  it  could  ever 
accomplish  any  positive  good.  There  would  indeed  have 
been  little  to  marvel  at  in  the  posthumous  fame  and  power 


THE  CRUCIFIXION.  3^9 

of  Christ.  His  was  a  name  and  personality  that  could 
hardly  but  be  made  beautiful  by  death.  One  who  had  been 
so  loved  and  lovely  could  not  fail  to  be  idealized  when  He 
lived  only  to  the  memory  too  fond  to  forget,  and  the  imagi- 
nation too  deeply  touched  to  be  prosaic.  The  dead  are 
always  holier  and  more  perfect  to  us  than  the  Hving.  To 
lose  is  only  to  love  more  deeply,  to  become  forgetful  of 
faults  that  pained,  mindful  only  of  virtues  that  ennobled 
and  graces  that  adorned.  Could  we  love  and  think  of  our 
living  as  we  love  and  think  of  our  dead,  the  loftiest  dreams 
and  most  hopeful  prophecies  as  to  human  happiness  would 
be  more  than  fulfilled.  But  Christ's  death  was  in  all  that 
strikes  the  senses  not  one  the  memory  could  love  to  recall, 
or  the  imagination  so  dwell  on  as  to  idealize  and  glorify. 
It  was  the  worst  the  men  that  hated  Him  could  think  of. 
Even  they  were  satisfied  with  its  horror  and  shame.  It 
made  Him,  in  the  eye  of  their  law  and  people,  accursed.^ 
We  can  hardly  imagine  what  the  cross  then  was — so 
different  has  it  now  become.  It  stood  almost  below  hatred, 
was  the  instrument  of  death  to  the  guiltiest  and  most 
servile.  Rome  in  her  nobler  and  simpler  days  had  not 
known  it,  had  only,  when  depraved  by  conquest  and 
brutalized  by  magnificence,  borrowed  it  from  the  baser  and 
crueller  East.  But  she  had  used  it  with  proud  discrimina- 
tion, too  much  respecting  herself  in  her  meanest  citizen 
to  crucify  him ;  crucifying,  as  a  rule,  only  the  conquered, 
the  alien,  and  the  enslaved.  To  be  doomed  to  the  cross 
was  to  be  doomed  not  simply  to  death,  but  to  dishonour, 
to  be  made  a  name  hateful,  infamous,  whose  chief  good 
was  oblivion.  The  death  was  horrible  enough,  so  cruel  as 
to  be  abhorrent  to  the  merciful  spirit  that  animated  the 
Hebrew  legislation.  But  the  very  horror  that  surrounded 
the  death  now  commended  it  to  *'  the  chief  priests  and 
elders."  He  who  had  claimed  to  be  above  their  law  was 
*  Deut.  xxi.  23  ;  Gal.  iii.  13. 


310  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

to  die  a  death  it  hated.  The  very  act  that  ended  His  life 
was  to  outlaw  Him,  was  to  prove  Him  a  disowned  Child 
of  Abraham,  a  Son  Moses  had  repudiated.  The  name 
that  had  so  gone  down  in  infamy  could  never  be  honoured, 
bore  a  curse  from  which  it  could  be  saved  only  by  oblivion. 
The  voice  that  had  first  cried,  "  Crucify  Him  1  "  seemed  to 
have  formulated  a  new  and  final  argument  against  all 
high  Divine  claims — disproof  by  odium,  refutation  of  the 
claim  to  the  Messiahship  by  the  abhorred  symbol  of  shame 
and  crime. 

But  Providence,  by  an  irony  infinitely  subtler  and  more 
terrible  than  the  priests',  was  to  prove  their  genius  but 
idiocy.  Their  elaborate  attempt  at  refutation  by  odium 
became  only  the  most  splendid  opportunity  possible  for 
the  exercise  of  Christ's  transforming  might.  The  cross  did 
not  eclipse  His  name,  His  name  transfigured  the  cross, 
making  it  luminous,  radiant,  a  light  for  the  ages,  the  sign 
of  the  gentleness  of  God.  What  is  so  extraordinary  is 
the  suddenness  and  completeness  of  the  change.  It  was 
accomplished,  as  it  were,  at  once  and  for  ever.  Suddenly, 
by  the  very  fact  of  Christ's  dying  on  it,  it  ceased  to  be  to 
the  imagination  the  old  loathed  implement  of  death,  and 
became  the  symbol  of  life.  Time  was  not  allowed  to  soften 
its  horrors ;  it  was  not  left  to  distance  to  weave  its  en- 
chantments round  it ;  in  the  very  generation  when,  and 
the  very  city  where,  He  died  the  cross  was  glorified.  This 
is  one  of  the  strangest  yet  most  certain  historical  facts. 
There  is  nothing  more  primitive  in  Christianity  than  the 
pre-eminence  of  the  cross,  and  apparently  there  is  nothing 
more  permanent.  Peter,  in  his  earliest  discourses,  em- 
phasized the  fact  of  the  crucifixion.^  The  one  object  Paul 
gloried  in  was  the  cross,^  and  the  one  thing  he  determined 
to  know  and  make  known  in  the  cities  he  visited  was 

*  Acts  ii.  22-24  ;  iii.  13-15  ;  iv.  10.  "Gal.  vi.  14. 


THE  CRUCIFIXION.  311 

Christ  and  Him  crucified.^  The  death  and  its  symbol 
constituted  the  very  heart  of  His  theology,  what  gave  to  it 
being,  vitality,  and  significance.  In  the  very  age  when 
the  cross  was  most  hated,  when  its  bad  associations  were 
intensest  and  most  vivid,  Christ  crucified  was  preached  as 
the  power  and  the  wisdom  of  God."*  And  as  extraordinary 
as  the  preaching  was  its  success :  "  the  word  of  God  grew 
mightily  and  prevailed."  Suddenly,  as  it  exchanged  infamy 
for  imperishable  fame,  it  became  the  organ  of  Divine  re- 
creative energies,  stood  up  like  a  living  being,  breathing 
the  breath  of  life  into  our  dead  humanity.  And  its  might 
has  not  been  short-lived  ;  its  energies  seern  inexhaustible. 
For  centuries  it  has  been  the  sign  of  the  grace  that  reigns 
through  righteousness,  the  pledge  of  God's  peace  with  man 
and  man's  with  God,  the  comfort  of  the  penitent,  the  in- 
spiration of  the  philanthropist,  the  symbol  on  fields  of 
slaughter  of  Divine  charity  working  through  kindly  human 
hearts  and  gentle  human  hands,  the  banner  which,  as  a 
New  Shechinah,  has  witnessed  to  the  Divine  Presence  in 
the  van  of  every  battle  good  has  waged  with  ill.  If  we 
think  what  the  cross  had  been  to  the  centuries  before 
Christ,  then  what  it  has  been  to  the  centuries  since  Christ, 
we  may  find  it  in  some  degree  a  measure  of  the  exaltation 
of  Him  who  could  so  exalt  it.  His  enemies  meant  it  to 
make  an  utter  end  of  Him  and  His  cause,  but  He  made  it 
the  emblem  of  the  eternal  reconciliation  worked  through 
Him  of  God  and  man.  Their  worst  against  Him  became 
their  very  best  for  Him.  The  setting  of  crime  and  passion 
which  they  gave  to  His  death  only  makes  it  look  the 
Diviner,  surrounds  it  with  a  glory  more  wonderful  than 
any  the  radiance  of  heaven  has  ever  woven  out  of  the  dark- 
ness of  earth.  The  shadow  of  the  cross  is  like  the  shadow 
of  the  sun,  the  light  and  life  of  the  world. 

'  I  Cor.  ii.  2.  ■  Ibid.  i.  24. 


312  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

Now,  how  was  it  that  Christ  was  able  to  work  this 
most  extraordinary,  as  it  were,  posthumous  miracle  ?  For 
miracle  in  a  real  sense  it  undoubtedly  was.  The  achieve- 
ment of  His  death  was  a  more  violent  contradiction  to 
the  probabilities  or  uniform  sequences  which  men  call 
laws  of  nature  or  of  history  than  any  achievement  of  His 
life.  No  death  has  had  for  man  the  same  significance  as 
His;  no  instrument  of  death  has  ever  exercised  so  myste- 
rious a  power  or  subsumed  and  symbolized  so  many  tran- 
scendental truths  as  the  cross.  And  why  ?  Why  out  of  the 
innumerable  millions  of  deaths  that  have  happened  in  his- 
tory has  His  alone  had  so  extraordinary  a  meaning,  and 
been  a  spiritual  force  so  immense  and  permanent,  capable 
of  working  the  mightiest  changes  while  itself  incapable  of 
change  ?  The  reasons  are  not  apparent  to  the  senses.  A 
sensuous  description  of  Christ's  death  may  fill  us  with 
horror,  or  touch  us  with  pity,  but  cannot  subdue  us  to 
reverence  or  win  us  to  love.  There  have  been  thousands 
of  deaths  more  tragic  and  terrible,  more  ostensibly  heroic, 
with  more  immediate  and  evident  and  calculable  results. 
Nor  can  the  dogmatic  meaning  attributed  to  His  death 
explain  its  unique  pre-eminence  in  place  and  power.  The 
very  point  is,  why  it  only,  of  all  the  deaths  man  has 
suffered,  came  to  have  this  dogmatic  meaning,  to  be  so 
construed  and  interpreted  ?  Dogma  did  not  create  its 
pre-eminence ;  its  pre-eminence  created  dogma.  Christian 
doctrine  is  but  a  witness  to  the  infinite  peculiarity  which 
belongs  to  Christ's  death.  Centuries  before  Augustine 
and  Anselm  speculated  the  cross  had  proved  itself  to  be 
the  power  and  the  wisdom  of  God  ;  and  their  speculations 
were  but  attempts  to  find  a  theory  that  would  explain  the 
fact.  Nor  can  the  reason  be  found  in  the  nation  and  de- 
scent of  the  Crucified.  The  Jews  had,  indeed,  an  ancient 
sacerdotal  worship,  a  system  of  sacrifices  extensive  and 
minute ;  but  the  thing  after  idolatry  they  most  abhorred 


THE  CRUCIFIXION,  313 

was  the  association  of  the  sacrificial  idea  with  any  human 
death.  Into  the  heart  of  Judaism,  pure  and  simple,  the 
notions,  so  familar  to  the  apostles,  which  represented 
Christ  as  the  Lamb  of  God  bearing  the  sin  of  the  world, 
a  propitiation  for  sin,  dying  for  our  sins,  could  never  have 
entered.  Then,  too,  as  we  have  so  distinctly  seen,  the 
affinities  of  Jesus  were  not  with  Jewish  sacerdotalism.  It 
crucified  Him ;  He  stood  in  absolute  antagonism  to  it. 
The  pre-eminence  of  the  death  is  due  to  no  secondary  or 
accidental  cause,  but  to  the  pre-eminence  of  the  Person  who 
died.  It  is  only  as  the  death  is  interpreted  in  its  relation 
to  Him  and  His  history  that  its  wonderful  significance  and 
charm  for  the  world  can  be  understood. 

But  is  the  significance  attached  to  His  death  really  due 
to  Jesus  ?  Was  it  not  rather  created  by  Paul  and  other 
and  later  Christian  teachers  ? 

We  touch  here  one  of  the  most  interesting  problems  in 
the  history  of  New  Testament  thought.  How  was  it  that 
the  apostles  came  to  give  such  prominence  to  the  death  of 
Christ,  to  assign  to  it  a  place  so  cardinal,  and  to  attribute 
to  it  so  constitutive  a  significance  ?  The  Tubingen  school 
used  to  argue  :  The  primitive  Christian  creed  was  simply 
this,  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  the  Messiah.  In  making  this 
confession  the  first  Christians  did  not  renounce  Judaism. 
They  remained  good  Jews,  distinguished  from  their 
brethren — all  of  whom  held  Messianic  beliefs,  many  of 
whom  believed  particular  persons  to  be  the  Messiah — only 
by  their  special  faith,  Jesus  is  our  Christ.  But  this 
speciously  conceals  a  radical  difference.  The  predicative 
term  may  be  in  each  case  the  same,  but  what  it  expresses 
is  an  absolute  antithesis.  Jesus  is  not  the  Jewish  Messiah 
— is  in  character,  mission,  fate  the  exact  opposite.  He  is 
no  prince,  no  victor  in  the  sense  known  to  Judaism,  no 
militant  incorporation  of  its  most  violent  antipathies.  He 
is  meek  and  lowly  in  heart,  gentle  to  the  alien,  tender  to 


314  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  sinner,  friendly  to  the  publican,  a  patient  sufferer 
who,  disbelieved  by  the  Pharisees  and  priests,  is  crucified 
by  the  Gentiles,  and  pitied  for  His  pains  and  weakness  by 
the  Gentile  who  crucifies  Him.  Now  there  were  no 
notions  so  radically  incompatible  with  the  Messiah  of 
Judaism,  and  the  development  and  interpretation  they  at 
once  received  made  them  more  incompatible  still.  What 
has  to  be  determined,  then,  is  how  this  set  of  new  and  alien 
notions  came  to  be  associated  with  the  idea  of  the  Christ 
in  order  that  Christhood  might  be  attributed  to  Jesus  ? 
Pfleiderer^  has  ingeniously  attempted  to  explain  this  by 
tracing  the  psychological  genesis  of  the  Pauline  theology. 
Paul  comes  to  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  ;  that 
changes  his  whole  mental  attitude  and  outlook.  One  who 
has  risen  from  the  dead  and  now  lives  and  reigns  must  be 
the  Messiah.  It  was  a  more  wonderful  thing  to  die  and  to 
rise  than  never  to  die  at  all.  The  death,  as  the  condition 
of  the  resurrection,  was  glorified  by  it,  became,  with  all  its 
passion  and  pain,  necessary  to  it,  and  therefore  to  the  full  and 
perfect  Messiahship.  The  moment  this  position  was  reached 
Old  Testament  prophecy  came  to  help  out  the  Apostle's 
thought.  He  recalled  the  idea  of  the  Suffering  Servant  of 
God,  despised  and  forsaken  of  the  people,  bearing  their 
sins,  carrying  their  sorrows, for  their  sakes  stricken,  smitten, 
and  afflicted,  yet  by  His  very  patience  and  self-sacrifice 
redeeming  Israel,  and  working  out  for  him  a  nobler  and 
holier  being.  The  attributes  and  achievements  of  this 
servant  Paul  transferred  to  Jesus,  and  so  gave  a  new  signi- 
ficance to  His  passion  and  death,  and  planted  Him  in  a 
relation  to  Old  Testament  prophecy  that  made  Him  at 
once  its  fulfilment  and  Messiah. 

Now,  all  this  is  clever,  ingenious,  subtle;  indeed,  ex- 
ceedingly so ;  but  —  is   it   historical?     Grant  that  it  ex- 
plains the  genesis  of  the  Pauline  theology,  what  then  ? 
'  Paulinismus^  pp.  i,  ff. 


THE  CRUCIFIXION,  315 

Greater  things  are  left  unexplained,  and  things  that  are 
necessary  to  explain  it.  There  is  the  power  of  this  in- 
geniously analyzed  and  derived  doctrine  over  the  hearts 
and  minds  of  men,  Gentiles  as  well  as  Jews.  It  did  not 
strike  them  as  a  dogma  strongly  marked  by  the  idio- 
syncrasies of  an  intensely  Hebraistic  nature,  working  with 
scholastic  tools  and  combining  old  convictions  with  a  new 
belief;  but  it  came  to  them  as  a  revelation  of  God.  It 
was  not  the  theology  of  Paul  that  converted  men  and 
created  Churches,  but  the  doctrine  of  the  cross  common  to 
him  and  the  other  Christian  preachers.  The  speech  to 
Peter  at  Antioch,^  the  confession  in  the  crucial  passage  in 
the  First  Epistle  to  Corinthians,^  that  by  Apollos  as  well 
as  by  himself  men  had  been  persuaded  to  believe,  proves 
that  Paul  on  this  point  recognized  their  essential  agree- 
ment. Then  Pfleiderer's  evolutional  theory  might  show 
how  well  adapted  Paul's  theology  was  to  conciliate  the 
Jew ;  but  it  fails  to  show  how,  with  all  its  adaptation  to 
the  Jew,  it  was  so  deeply  offensive  to  him,  and  how,  in 
spite  of  its  twofold  root  of  rabbinical  scholasticism  and 
prophetic  idealism,  it  was  so  splendidly  real  and  potent  to 
the  Greek.  This  ingenious  theory  but  helps  to  throw 
us  the  more  strongly  back  on  the  reality.  The  passion 
and  death  of  Christ  do  not  owe  their  significance  to  Paul, 
but  to  Christ.  The  Apostle  sought  to  explain  a  belief 
he  found  in  possession,  but  the  belief  was  created  by  the 
Person  in  whom  he  believed.  The  ideas  as  to  the  death  of 
Christ  current  in  the  primitive  Church  were  Christ's  ideas. 
He  is  here  the  creative  Presence  ;  His  Person  dignifies  the 
death  ;  His  words  interpret  it. 

It  is  necessary,  then,  to  reach  Christ's  own  idea  of  His 

death  and  what  it  was  to  be,  and  then  see  how  He  realized 

it.      He  early  anticipated  His  death,  knew  that  without  it 

He  could  not  be  faithful  to  Himself  and  His  mission.     Its 

*  Gal.  ii.  14,  ff.  ■  Chap.  iii.  5. 


3i6  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRTST. 

scene  was  to  be  Jerusalem,  its  agents  *'  the  chief  priests."  * 
Its  place  and  meaning  in  His  history  were  typified  to  the 
imagination  of  the  Evangelists  by  the  Transfiguration.* 
Just  about  the  time  when  He  began  to  speak  of  it  openly, 
Moses  and  Elias,  the  founder  and  reformer  of  Israel,  the 
representatives  of  the  Law  and  the  Prophets,  appeared  to 
Him.  "  The  decease  which  He  should  accomplish  at 
Jerusalem  "  they  approved  ;  their  approval  was  ratified 
by  Heaven  and  symbolized  by  the  glory  which  changed 
**the  fashion  of  His  countenance"  and  made  His  raiment 
"  white  and  glistering."  The  idea  so  expressed  is  evident : 
the  death  is  to  perfect  His  work  and  make  it  the  fulfilment 
alike  of  Law  and  Prophecy  in  Israel  ;  though  it  may  seem 
to  shame,  yet  it  is  to  exalt  and  transfigure  Him ;  though 
it  may  be  worked  by  human  hate,  yet  it  pleases  and 
glorifies  God.  And  these  ideas  penetrate  all  Christ's  refer- 
ences to  it.  He  is  the  gift  of  God,  sent  into  the  world  that 
the  world  through  Him  might  be  saved.^  He  is  the  good 
Shepherd  who  giveth  His  life  for  His  sheep."^  His  death  is 
to  be  so  rich  in  Divine  meaning  and  power  as  to  draw  all 
men  unto  Him.  And  these  thoughts  possess  Him  the 
more  the  nearer  He  comes  to  death.  They  receive  fullest 
expression  in  the  words  that  institute  the  Supper,  in  the 
Supper  He  institutes.  Its  symbols  perpetuate  the  mind  of 
One  who  believed  that  He  died  for  man,  shed  His  **  blobd 
for  many  for  the  remission  of  sins."  ^ 

But,  now,  we  must  see  how  Christ  realized  His  own 
idea  of  what  His  death  was  to  be.  In  order  to  this  we 
must  study  Him  in  the  article  of  death.  And,  happily, 
in  it  He  stands,  as  -it  were,  clear  in  the  sunlight.  It  is 
not  here  as  in  the  trial,  where  the  shadow  cast  of  man 
almost    hides    Him   from    our   view,   save   when   by   the 

*  Matt.  xvi.  21. 
'  Ibid.  xvii.  1-13  ;   Mark  ix.  2-7  ;   Luke  ix.  28-35. 
3  John  iii.  16,  17.  4  Ibid.  xi.  11. 

s  See  Supra,  pp.  243,  ff. 


THE  CRUCIFIXION,  317 

graphic  hand  of  John  He  is  drawn  forth  from  the  shade 
and  set  living  and  articulate  before  our  eyes.  But  now 
in  death  and  on  the  cross  He  fills  the  eye  and  prospect 
of  the  soul,  the  shadow  of  man  only  helping  the  better 
to  show  Him  clothed  with  a  light  which  makes  the  very 
place  of  His  feet  glorious.  In  those  last  hours  how 
dignified  His  silence,  how  Divine  His  speech,  how  com- 
plete His  self-sufficiency !  Round  Him  there  is  fretful 
noise,  in  Him  there  is  majestic  calm;  about  Him  violence, 
within  peace.  In  His  last  extremity,  when  man's  faith 
in  Him  has  perished.  He  knows  Himself,  and  dies,  while 
He  seems  to  men  the  vanquished,  the  conscious  Victor 
of  the  world. 

In  every  moment  of  the  Passion  Jesus  stands  before  us 
as  the  calm  self-conscious  Christ.  He  knows  Himself, 
and  no  event  can  unsettle  His  knowledge  or  disturb  His 
spirit.  The  hour  of  greatest  prostration  is  the  hour  of 
supreme  solitude ;  where  He  was  most  alone  there  He 
felt  most  aw^ed  by  the  magnitude  of  His  mission  and  the 
issues  it  involved.  But  man's  action,  however  fierce  and 
fatal,  failed  to  touch  the  quietness  and  the  assurance 
which  possessed  His  soul.  The  priests  and  the  people, 
Herod  and  Pilate,  were  all  depraved  by  the  trial ;  no  one 
of  them  was  after  it  as  good  as  he  had  been  before.  Suc- 
cessful crime,  disguised  in  legal  or  patriotic  and  pious 
forms,  is  more  injurious  to  the  moral  nature  than  crime 
ineffectual  and  confessed.  Judas  was  happier  in  his 
death  than  Caiaphas  or  Pilate  in  his  life.  The  priest 
would  henceforth  be  more  a  man  of  subtlety  and  craft, 
the  readier  to  use  his  sacred  office  for  selfish  and  im- 
moral ends.  The  governor  would  be  a  man  less  upright 
before  his  own  conscience,  fallen  deeply  in  his  own 
regard,  less  careful  of  justice,  more  respectful  to  astute 
strength,  more  fearful  of  the  intrigue  that  could  create  a 
tumult,  and  might  work  him  grief.     But  the  trial  had  not 


3i8  STUDIES  IN  THE  LITE  OF  CHRIST. 

broken  Christ's  spirit  or  lowered  His  judgment  of  Himself, 
had  only  made  Him  the  more  clearly  and  consciously  the 
Messiah.  The  mockery,  the  scourging,  the  presentation 
to  the  people,  did  not  make  Him  in  His  own  eyes  any  the 
less  the  Christ.  We  feel  the  almost  infinite  impertinence 
in  Pilate  daring  to  pity  and  patronize  and,  in  his  obsti- 
nately vacillating  way,  seek  to  save  Jesus;  but  He  was 
too  lofty  to  feel  the  impertinence,  was  too  surely  the 
King  to  feel  as  if  anything  could  deny  or  destroy  His 
kinghood. 

And  this  serene  consciousness  of  His  Divine  dignity 
and  mission  He  carries  with  Him  to  the  cross.  He  does 
not  go  to  it  as  one  condemned,  or  as  one  who  feels  evil 
mightier  than  good.  He  is  not  despondent  and  reproach- 
ful like  conscious  virtue  driven  vanquished  before  victorious 
vice.  Luke  enables  us  to  see  Him  as  He  emerges  from 
the  trial  on  His  way  with  the  cross  to  the  crucifixion.' 
The  men  around  Him  are  brutal  enough,  but  the  women 
leave  Him  not  unpitied.  The  once  loved  but  now  for- 
saken, round  whose  name  so  many  hopes  had  gathered,  of 
whose  deeds  so  many  praises  had  been  spoken,  they  can- 
not now  dislike  or  despise.  The  contrast  of  His  present 
misery  with  His  past  fame  only  the  more  appeals  to  their 
imaginative  sympathies,  and,  womanlike,  it  is  the  mother 
they  pity  even  more  than  the  Son.  But  an  object  of 
pity  He  cannot  allows  Himself  to  become.  His  lot  is  not 
one  to  be  bewailed  or  lamented — theirs  is  who  are  working 
His  death.  There  is  nothing  pitiful  in  His  sufferings  as 
He  bears  them,  though  much  to  pity  in  those  by  whom 
they  have  been  inflicted.  The  standpoint  is  not  subjec- 
tive or  egoistic,  but  objective  and  universal.  He  does  not 
need  compassion,  but  is  able  to  give  it.  Suffering  can 
be  to  Him  no  ultimate  evil,  is  rather  the  condition  of 
perfect  obedience  and  perfect  power.    But  to  the  men  that 

•  Luke  xxxiii.  26-31. 


THE  CRUCIFIXION.  319 

work  it  it  must  bring  ill.  The  last  calamity  to  the  doer  of  a 
wrong  is  complete  success  in  doing  it,  for  then  it  becomes 
a  challenge  the  Righteousness  that  rules  the  world  cannot 
allow  to  go  unaccepted.  And  retribution  cannot  always 
touch  the  guilty  and  spare  the  innocent.  The  guilty  so 
contain  the  innocent,  so  act  and  speak  for  them,  that  they 
become,  as  it  were,  incorporated,  participators  in  the  crime 
and  in  its  fruits.  All  this  is  most  apparent  to  the  mind 
of  Christ.  There  has  been  a  national  sin,  which  must 
have  national  consequences,  and  the  calamities  which 
come  of  criminal  folly  show  no  mercy  to  those  who  have 
been  neither  criminal  nor  foolish.  And  the  heart  of  Christ 
is  touched  not  at  the  thought  of  Himself,  His  wrongs,  and 
His  sufferings,  but  at  the  thought  of  the  innocent  who 
are  to  suffer  with  and  through  the  guilty.  "  Daughters  of 
Jerusalem,"  He  says,  "  weep  not  for  Me,  but  weep  for 
yourselves,  and  for  your  children."  And  then,  in  language 
which  recalls  His  later  and  prophetic  discourses.  He  tells 
what  the  end  is  to  be.  Two  pictures  stand  before  His 
soul,  one  grimly  real,  the  other  finely  ideal.  He  sees  a 
besieged  city,  gaunt  famine  and  hungry  pestilence  in  its 
homes,  fierce  and  fanatical  factions  in  its  councils,  im- 
potence in  its  hands  and  on  its  ramparts;  while  despair  has 
turned  the  mother's  love  to  misery,  and  made  the  barren 
seem  blessed,  and  the  warrior's  courage  to  the  despon- 
dency that  covets  death  to  escape  defeat.  This  is  the 
picture  of  what  is  to  be ;  the  answer  to  the  cry,  "  His 
blood  be  on  us  and  our  children."  *  Then  beyond  it  He 
sees  another  vision — two  trees,  one  of  ancient  growth, 
immense,  many-branched,  umbrageous,  but  utterly  dry 
and  decayed,  its  vitality  spent,  its  glory  almost  gone ;  the 
other,  green,  young,  sapful,  a  tree  that  has  sprung  from 
the  roots  and  grown  under  the  shadow  of  the  older  and 
vaster.      Wisdom  had   said,  "  Spare  the  green ;  let  the 

'  Matt,  xxvii.  25. 


320         STUDIES  IJN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

withered  perish  that  the  vigorous  may  live."  But  craft 
and  passion  struck  down  the  green  that  it  might  under- 
prop the  dry ;  yet  all  in  vain.  Trees  live  not  by  being 
propped  or  girded,  but  by  their  own  vital  and  inherent 
energies.  The  fate  of  the  green  tree  will  only  make  the 
fall  of  the  dry  more  utter  and  inevitable.  Here  is  the 
ideal  picture.  Christ  is  the  green  tree,  Judaism  is  the  dry. 
He  must  be  sacrificed  that  it  may  be  saved.  But  Nature 
laughs  at  the  cunning  of  man ;  in  her  realm  there  is  only 
room  for  the  living ;  and  he  who  seeks  by  destroying  the 
living  to  preserve  the  dead  will  find  that  Nature  disdains 
his  sacrifice,  and,  in  her  own  beneficently  inflexible  way, 
preserves  what  ought  to  live,  removes  what  must  die. 

Jesus,  then,  even  while  He  bears  the  cross,  knows  Him- 
self to  be  a  source,  not  an  object  of  pity  ;  able  to  compas- 
sionate, not  fit  to  be  compassionated.  The  evil  that  was 
being  worked  in  selfish  fear  was  an  evil  to  its  workers,  not 
to  Him.  In  the  bosom  of  their  future  there  was  lying  the 
most  calamitous  retribution;  in  His  the  most  enduring  glory 
and  power.  The  dry  tree  which  was  to  be  burned  with 
fire  unquenchable  needed  pity  ;  the  green  tree,  which  no 
flames  of  their  kindling  could  consume,  needed  it  not.  And 
this  consciousness  waxed  rather  than  waned  under  the 
experience  of  the  cross.  It  was  a  kindly  Jewish  custom, 
unknown  to  the  harsher  Romans,  to  mitigate  the  agonies 
of  crucifixion  by  giving  a  stupefying  drink  to  the  condemned. 
But  when,  in  conformity  with  the  custom,  drink  was 
offered  to  Jesus,  He  refused  it.'  His  death  was  of  too 
universal  significance  to  be  suffered  in  stupor.  He  must 
know  both  dyingand  death;  conquer  not  by  drowned  senses, 
but  by  victorious  spirit.  And  the  spirit  stands  before  us 
incorporated,  as  it  were,  in  its  own  words.  Jesus  uttered 
seven  sayings  on  the  cross — three  in  the  earlier  stages, 
while  the  tide  of  life  was  still  strong ;   four  in  the  later, 

*  Matt,  xxvii.  34  ;  Mark  xv.  23. 


THE  crucifixion;  321 

while  life  was  painfully  ebbing  away.  The  first  concern 
His  relations  to  the  men  and  the  world  He  is  leaving,  the 
second  concern  His  relations  to  God  and  the  world  He 
was  entering.  Together  they  show  us  how  Christ  in  this 
supreme  moment  was  related  to  God  and  man. 

The  three  sayings  of  the  earlier  period  form  a  beautiful 
unit}^  showing  Christ,  first,  in  His  universal,  next,  in  His 
particular  relations  to  the  guilty,  and  then  in  His  personal 
relation  to  the  true  aftd  saintly.  The  first  saying  is  like 
the  tender  echo  or  Amen  to  the  reply  to  the  weeping 
women,  is  the  perfect  expression  of  compassion  for  the 
guilty  and  pity  for  the  innocent  who  were  to  suffer  after 
and  for  them.  In  His  supreme  hour  self,  in  a  sense,  ceased 
to  be,  and  Christ  was  sublimed  into  universal  love.  He 
had  no  tear  for  His  own  sorrows,  no  lament  for  Himself  as 
forsaken,  crucified,  dying.  His  grief  was  for  those  wicked 
enough  to  crucify  the  Sinless,  to  sin  against  the  light. 
Before  Him  lay  the  city,  white,  beautiful,  vocal  with  re- 
ligious songs,  busy  with  festive  rites  and  preparations  for 
solemn  sacrifice,  but  its  heart  defiled  with  blood,  a  bond  of 
invisible  darkness  lying  across  its  radiant  sunlight.  Round 
Him  were  the  priests  and  scribes  and  people,  untouched  by 
pity,  spiteful  while  their  noble  enemy  was  in  the  very 
article  of  death,  crying  at  Him  in  mockery,  "  He  saved 
others,  Himself  He  cannot  save."  **  If  He  be  the  King 
of  Israel,  let  Him  now  come  down  from  the  cross,  and  we 
will  believe  Him."^  And  their  blindness,  their  guilt,  their 
insensibility  even  to  sensuous  pity,  filled  His  soul  with  a 
compassion  that  could  only  struggle  to  His  lips  in  the  cry, 
*'  Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do."* 
The  flight  from  man  to  God,  the  sense  of  the  Divine 
paternal  presence  amid  the  desertion  of  man,  is  most  beau- 
tiful. The  prayer,  '*  forgive  them,"  is  the  finest  blossom 
of  His  own  teaching,  what  makes  forgiveness  of  enemies  a 

*  Matt,  xxvii.  42.  *  Luke  xxiii.  34. 


322  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

reality  to  all  time  and  a  possibility  for  every  man.  It  was 
the  creation  of  a  new  thing  in  the  world — love  deeply 
wronged  daring  to  love,  unashamed,  in  the  face  of  the 
enormity  that  wronged  it ;  and  the  new  was  to  be  a  creative 
thing,  making  the  apothesisof  revenge  for  ever  impossible. 
But  the  miracle  of  tenderness  is  the  reason — ''  they  know 
not  what  they  do."  Passion  is  blind,  hate  sees  only  the 
way  to  gratitication,  not  whither  it  tends  or  what  it  means. 
Christ  does  not  extenuate  the  ignorance,  but  He  allows  the 
ignorance  to  lighten  the  sin.  It  does  not  cease  to  be  a  sin 
because  done  in  ignorance — the  very  ignorance  is  sin — 
but  Christ  wishes,  as  it  were,  that  everything  personal  to 
Himself  should  perish  from  the  Divine  view  of  their  act. 
The  prayer  may  be  said  to  embody  the  feeling  of  God  as 
He  looks  down  upon  man,  sinning  in  fancied  strength, 
heedless  that  Omnipotence  lives.  Omniscience  watches, 
and  Righteousness  rules,  just  as  in  the  crowd  about  the 
cross  we  see  man,  untouched  by  the  wondrous  Divine 
pity,  going  on  his  mocking  way,  vengeful  to  the  bitter 
end. 

The  saying  that  expresses  His  particular  relation  to  the 
guilty  is  also  peculiar  to  Luke.^  The  priests,  no  doubt, 
thought  it  a  happ}^  stroke  of  policy  to  place  Jesus  between 
the  two  thieves.  Association  in  death  was  the  nearest 
thing  they  could  get  to  association  in  guilt.  It  made  it 
impossible  to  deny  that  He  had  died  the  death  of  the  guilty 
with  the  guilty.  The  men  who  had  loved  Him  could  not 
recall  His  life  without  also  recalling  His  death ;  but  the 
one  was  so  steeped  in  horror  that  they  would  be  willing, 
in  order  to  escape  it,  to  forget  the  other.  The  death  on 
the  cross  and  between  the  thieves  was  sure  to  break  the 
beautiful  image  of  His  life,  and  make  it  a  thing  too  hideous 
to  be  loved,  too  horrible  for  memory.  But  Mephistopheles 
is  most  foolish  when  most  cunning;  his  subtlest  are  his 
*  Luke  xxiii.  32,  33)  39-43- 


THE  CRUCIFIXION.  323 

least  successful  deeds.     The  transfiguring  force  in  Christ 
compelled  their  wicked  design  to  speak  His  praise.    Their 
fine  combination  became  an  acted  parable,  a  living  symbol 
of  Christ's  action  in  time.     The  inmost  nature  of  the  men 
beside  Him  blossomed  at  His  touch.     The  one  thief  was 
possessed  by  the  spirit  of  the  multitude,  the  other  was 
penetrated  by  the  spirit  of  Christ.     The  first  mocked  with 
the  mockers,  felt  no  sanctity  in  death,  no  awe  in  its  pre- 
sence, no  evil  in  sin,  dared,  though  stained  with  many  a 
crime,  to  associate  himself  with  the  Stainless,  and  demand 
with  cool  profanity,  "  Save  Thyself  and  us."     The  second, 
like  one  who  sits  in  the  shadow  of  eternity  and  gropes  that 
he  may  touch  the  hand  of  God,  feels  that  men  who  are  ''in 
the  same  condemnation  "  ought  to  be  sacred  to  each  other, 
knows  himself  to  be  justly,  while  Jesus  is  unjustly,  con- 
demned, believes  that  One  who  is  condemned  for  His  very 
goodness,  and  is  so  good  as  to  be  gracious  to  the  men  who 
condemn  Him,  must  be  indeed  the  Christ,  the  very  gentle- 
ness of  God  come  to  live  and  suffer  in  soft  strength  among 
men.     And  so  he  prays  Jesus  to  remember  him  when  He 
comes  in  His  kingdom,  recognizing  the  Messiah  in  the  very 
article  of  death.     The  answer  is  extraordinary — "  To-day 
thou  shalt  be  with   Me  in  paradise."     Christ  is  serenely 
conscious  of  His  dignity.     The  cross  has  not  shamed  Him 
into  silence  as  to  His  claims.     He  knows  Himself  to  be 
the  Son  of  God,  that  He  has  paradise  before  Him,  that  He 
has  the  right  and  the  might  to  save.     Perhaps  in  no  other 
saying  does  Jesus  so  strongly  witness  to  Himself  as  the 
Christ.     In  beautiful  silence  He  hears  the  railer,  leaving 
him  to  be  reproved  by  the  echo  of  his  own  words ;  in  beau- 
tiful speech  He  answers  the  prayer  of  the  penitent,  and 
promises  more  than  is  asked.      Was  the  promise  but  an 
empty   word  ?     The   heart    of  the  ages  has  confessed,  if 
Jesus  was  ever  real  it  was  now.     He  who  after  such  a  life 
could  so  speak  in  the  face  of  death  to  the  dying  must  hold 


324  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

the  keys  of  paradise  ;  and  if  He  could  open  it  then,  what 
must  He  be  able  to  do  now  ? 

But  more  than  the  guilty  demanded  His  care.  At  the 
foot  of  the  cross  stood  a  group  of  women,  in  its  heart  the 
mother  of  the  Crucified,  by  her  side  the  disciple  Jesus 
loved.  The  tearful  face  of  the  mother  touched  her  Son, 
and  called  up  perhaps  visions  of  childhood,  memories  of 
the  happy  home  at  Nazareth,  where  care  dwelt  not,  and 
love  brooded,  and  the  shadow  of  the  cross  was  too  distant 
to  dash  the  sunlight  that  streamed  over  all.  But  the 
visions  of  the  past  died  before  the  sight  of  the  present. 
Before  His  mother's  agony  He  forgot  His  own.  The  look 
of  desolate  and  ravished  love,  of  the  despair  that  had 
quenched  her  once  splendid  hopes,  of  horror  at  the  lone- 
liness that  was  creeping  into  and  poisoning  her  very  life, 
pierced  Him  to  the  heart.  He  seemed  to  feel  what  it  was 
to  a  mother  so  to  lose  such  a  Son  ;  and  so  with  richest 
tenderness  He  gave  her  one  she  could  love  for  His  sake, 
who  himself  would  be  comforted  in  loving  the  mother  of 
the  Master  he  loved.  *' Woman,  behold  thy  son!  "  was 
His  word  to  Mary ;  *'  Son,  behold  thy  mother ! "  His 
charge  to  John.  The  world  has  loved  Him  the  more  for 
His  filial  love,  and  feels  maternity  the  holier  for  His 
dutiful  and  beautiful  Sonship. 

But  now  we  must  consider  the  four  sayings  of  the  later 
period  of  the  agony,  when  the  tide  of  life  was  painfully 
ebbing.  They  fall  into  two  pairs.  Of  the  first  pair,  the 
one  expresses  His  physical  distress,  the  other  His  spiritual 
desolation.  The  cry  of  physical  distress  is,  *'  I  thirst ;  "  ' 
the  cry  of  spiritual  is,  "  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  Thou 
forsaken  Me  ? "  The  first  is  significant  of  the  coming 
end,  and  stands  fitly  enough  in  the  Fourth  Gospel,  where 
the  very  history  is  an  allegory  and  each  event  the  symbol 
*  John  ::ix.  28. 


THE  CRUCIFIXION.  325 

of  a  sacred  truth.  To  the  mind  of  John,  Christ  is  the 
Paschal  Lamb  ;  at  His  cry  the  men  about  Him  who  have 
prepared  Him  for  the  sacrifice  now  make  ready  for  the 
feast.  Their  acts  are  a  mockery  of  the  real,  a  perversion 
of  the  true.  He  thirsts  for  the  consummation,  and  in 
derision  they  prepare  Him  for  the  end.  But  the  cry  of 
spiritual  desolation  is  of  immenser  meaning,  and  must  be 
understood  if  Christ  in  His  death  is  to  be  known.  Does 
it  mean  that  at  this  tremendous  moment  the  Father  hid 
His  face  from  the  Son,  turning  away  in  wrath  from  Him 
as  the  bearer  of  human  sin  ?  Does  it  mean  that  Jesus 
was  in  His  darkest  hour  absolutely  forsaken  of  the  Father, 
left,  when  His  need  was  sorest,  without  the  light  and  help 
of  the  Divine  Presence  ?  Looked  at  from  the  standpoint 
of  system,  these  positions  may  be  affirmed ;  looked  at 
from  the  standpoint  of  spirit,  there  is  perhaps  no  position 
more  deeply  offensive  to  the  moral  sense.  It  introduces 
the  profoundest  unreality  into  the  relations  of  the  Father 
and  the  Son,  and  empties  the  most  tragic  event  of  time 
of  all  its  tragic  significance.  Here  there  can  have  been 
no  seeming,  and  the  cry  must  be  interpreted  in  the  light 
of  principles  valid  and  universal.  Here,  then,  two  points 
must  be  noted  : 

I.  The  relation  of  the  Father  to  the  mission  of  the 
Son.  He  sent  the  Son  to  be  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 
The  Son  came  to  do  the  Father's  will,  made  obedience  to 
it  His  delight.  He  did  ever  the  things  that  pleased  God, 
and  God  was  ever  pleased  in  Him.  But  if  the  death  was 
necessary  to  the  work,  if  the  very  obedience  culminated 
in  the  cross,  how  could  it  be  that  the  Father  would  then 
desert  the  Son,  or  turn  from  Him  as  from  an  object  of 
wrath  ?  The  hour  of  death  was  the  moment  of  supreme 
obedience;  how,  then,  could  the  Love  obeyed  forsake  the 
Love  obedient  ?  If  there  was  reality  in  the  relations  of 
Father  and  Son,  if  the  work  the  one  did  the  other  approved, 


326  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

then  it  was  simply  impossible  that  He  who  is  faithful  to 
His  love  and  His  promise  could  have  forsaken  the  One 
who  most  trusted  Him  in  life  and  trusted  Him  most  of  all 
in  death. 

2,  The  person  of  the  Son  in  relation  to  the  Father. 
Jesus  Christ  was  a  being  in  whom  man  could  find  no  sin 
and  God  only  holiness.  His  joy  in  God  was  perfect.  In 
Him  the  union  of  the  Divine  and  human  was  absolutely 
realized.  He  was  in  the  Father,  and  the  Father  in  Him. 
He  had  a  will,  but  the  will  was  not  His  own.  His  words 
and  works  were  not  His,  but  His  Father's  who  had  sent 
Him.  The  union  of  His  being  and  will,  heart  and  con- 
science, with  God's  was  so  complete  as  to  become  almost 
identity.  He  lived  and  He  died  to  finish  the  work  the 
Father  had  given  Him  to  do. 

Now  the  cry  of  desertion  must  be  interpreted  in  the 
light  of  these  two  pnnciples.  It  cannot  stand  in  conflict 
with  either.  It  is  the  solitary  cry  with  despair  in  it  that 
ever  proceeded  from  the  lips  of  Christ;  but  the  despair 
was  the  child  of  human  weakness,  not  of  Divine  conduct. 
He  went  into  His  sorrow  deserted  of  man,  yet  upheld  of 
God,  certain  that  He  was  not  alone,  strong  in  the  strength 
of  the  Unseen  Hand.^  He  went  out  of  His  suffering  into 
the  silence  and  peace  of  the  Eternal,  certain  that  the 
Father  waited  to  receive  His  forsaken  and  crucified  Son.^ 
And  the  cry  that  stands  between  these  filial  confessions 
describes  no  act  of  God,  but  a  real  and  sad  human  expe- 
rience, which  only  the  more  showed  Jesus  to  be  the 
Brother  of  man  while  the  Son  of  God. 

But  we  must  now  seek  to  understand  the  experience 
which  prompted  the  cry.  Here,  then,  it  is  necessary  to 
note  that  Christ,  while  a  supernatural  person,  accomplished 
His  work  under  natural  conditions.  His  power  existed 
and  was  used,  not  for  Himself,  but  for  others,  not  for  per- 
*  John  xvi.  32.  *  Luke  xxiii.  46. 


THE  CRUClFf^amr  '  /         327 


sonal,  but  for  universal  ends.  His  Divine  might  helped 
man,  did  not  help  His  own  w^eakness  or  relieve  His  own 
hunger.  The  paralyzed  under  His  touch  stood^  up  strong 
and  supple,  but  He  Himself  had  to  rest  by  a  wayside  well 
and  ask  water  to  quench  His  thirst.  The  sick  unto  death 
came  back  at  His  bidding,  but  though  He  had  power  over 
His  own  life,  He  never  used  it  to  escape  the  doom  that 
compels  every  child  of  Adam  to  go  down  into  the  silence 
and  darkness  of  the  grave.  He  is  the  splendid  and  solitary 
example  of  One  who  was  by  nature  and  for  others  more 
than  man,  but  by  choice  and  for  Himself  man  only.  And 
being  man  in  all  things,  born  into  our  common  lot,  unaided 
in  His  work,  in  His  conflict  with  evil  and  against  sin,  by 
any  supernatural  energies  or  diviner  agencies  than  are 
common  to  man.  He  tasted  in  the  exceeding  weakness  of 
man  the  exceeding  terror  and  gloom  and  strength  of  death. 
And  yet  He  could  not  feel  in  the  jaws  of  death  like  one 
of  its  common  victims  ;  He  was  more  to  it,  it  was  more  to 
Him.  His  consciousness  was  vaster  than  ours,  His  rela- 
tions with  man  as  with  God  infinitely  closer  and  more 
complex.  He  came  to  death  as  incarnate  humanity,  our 
race  personified,  the  second  Head,  the  type  and  germ  of 
a  new  and  spiritual  mankind.  And  so  the  issues  in  His 
dying,  as  in  His  living,  were  immenser  than  in  man's. 
The  father  is  a  man,  but  also  a  father,  bears  in  him  the 
happiness,  well-being,  comfort  of  a  loved  home,  and  death 
to  him  is  painful  not  for  what  it  is,  but  for  what  it  brings 
to  them  who  love  and  are  about  to  lose.  The  general  is 
a  man,  but  also  a  general ;  and  if  he  falls  wounded  in  the 
battle,  he  fears  death  less  for  his  own  sake  than  his  army's, 
the  men  who  in  losing  him  may  lose  everything.  So 
Jesus  dies  as  the  Man  and  as  the  Christ ;  and  the  cry  of 
desertion  comes  from  Him  as  the  Man,  but  the  Man  dying 
as  the  Christ. 

In  order  to  understand  why  it  was  so,  two  points  must 


328  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

be  considered;  first,  the  universal  experience  in  death,  and 
next,  the  particular  circumstances  of  Christ.  As  to  the 
first,  He  was  experiencing  at  this  moment  what  man  in 
all  his  multitudinous  generations  had  experienced,  or  was 
to  experience,  in  the  hour  and  article  of  death.  What 
death  is  to  man,  to  human  nature  as  such,  it  then  was  to 
Christ.  He  tasted  it  to  the  uttermost — its  darkness,  its 
loss  to  the  living,  its  dread  to  the  dying,  its  mockery  of 
hope,  its  cruelty  to  love,  its  fateful  defeat  of  promise,  the 
stern  and  merciless  foot  with  which  it  walks  over  and 
tramples  down  the  fondest  dreams  and  affections  of  the 
heart.  It  is  hardly  in  human  nature  to  love  God  in  death, 
for  death  seems  the  negation  of  God.  In  dying,  time  is 
lost,  eternity  is  not  yet  won,  the  known  is  fading,  the 
unknown  has  still  to  show  its  unfamiliar  face,  so  as  to  let 
it  be  seen,  all  old  experiences  are  perishing,  no  new  expe- 
riences are  formed.  And  so  the  supports  of  faith  have 
fallen  utterly  from  the  spirit,  and  it  feels  for  the  moment 
absolutely  alone.  It  is  a  moment  when  neither  time  nor 
eternity  is  to  the  spirit,  and  God  has  ceased  to  be^  And 
this  moment,  inevitable  to  human  nature,  Christ  realized 
as  Man — as,  in  a  sense,  collective  Humanity — and  out  of 
its  absolute  loneliness,  out  of  its  dense  gloom,  came  the 
despairing  cry,  "  My  God,  My  God,  why  hast  Thou  for- 
saken Me  ?  "  The  experience  so  expressed  completed,  as 
it  were,  His  identification  with  man.  Our  nature's  last  and 
utmost  misery  was  tasted,  and  the  Captain  of  our  salva- 
tion died  perfected  through  suffering. 

As  to  the  particular  circumstances  of  Christ's  death,  it 
is  to  be  noted  how  they  intensify  the  common  human 
experience  as  realized  in  Him.  These  were  creative  of 
the  sorrow  that  was  realest  suffering.  The  wooden  cross 
of  Calvary  was  not  the  cross  of  Christ,  but  what  it  sym- 
bolized, the  contradiction  of  sinners,  the  bitterness  *and 
evil  of  sin.      In  pjiysical  suffering  as  such  there  is  no 


THE  CRUCIFIXION.  329 

intrinsic  good,  but  much  actual  evil.  It  does  not  by 
itself  tend  to  elevate  and  sanctify  the  mind,  but  rather  to 
harden  and  deprave.  In  plague-stricken  cities  the  worst 
passions  are  often  developed.  Men  grow  indifferent  to  life, 
indifferent  to  death,  coarse,  even  brutish,  in  thought  and 
feeling,  speech  and  action.  If  a  distinguished  sufferer  is 
also  a  distinguished  saint,  it  is  not  because  of  the  suffer- 
ing, but  because  of  a  Holy  Presence  in  the  soul  transmut- 
ing the  base  metal  of  earth  into  the  pure  gold  of  heaven. 
Now  the  grand  thing  about  Christ  is  not  His  physical  pain, 
but  His  spiritual  sorrow.  And  this  sorrow  is  due  to  sin. 
The  guilty  may  feel  its  legal  penalties,  but  the  guiltless 
are  touched  and  pierced  by  its  moral  results.  The  devil's 
sin  is  a  greater  sorrow  to  God  than  to  the  devil,  and  the 
crime  of  the  crucifiers  is  a  pain  to  Christ  infinitely  beyond 
what  retribution  can  ever  make  it  to  them.  He  had  loved, 
still  loved,  them,  yet  their  only  response  is  the  cross,  with 
all  its  mockery  and  hate.  And  His  sorrow  for  their  sin  is 
mightiest  as  He  goes  down  into  death.  For  the  moment 
His  experience  is  double ;  coincident  with  His  sense  of 
being  forsaken  is  His  sense  of  the  power  of  sin.  Loss  of 
God  is  a  transcendent  evil ;  loss  of  being  were  better. 
A  saintly  spirit  would  prefer  annihilation  to  exclusion  from 
the  vision  of  the  Divine  face.  But  to  feel  as  if  the  soul 
had  lost  hold  of  God  just  as  the  life  was  being  quenched 
by  victorious  sin,  may  well  indeed  seem  the  last  and  worst 
agony.  And  this  was  Christ's— a  moment  long  perhaps, 
yet  intense  as  eternity,  expressed  in  the  cry  that  has  so 
long  thrilkd  with  awe  the  pulses  of  the  world,  *'  My  God, 
my  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Me  ?  " 

But  the  darkness  soon  passed.  The  Father  heard  and 
answered.  Into  the  consciousness  of  the  Saviour  a  Presence 
came  that  changed  His  consciousness  of  desertion  and  loss 
into  one  of  victory  and  peace.  And  this  consciousness 
lives  in  the  sayings  that  are  His  last.     One  breathes  the 


330  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

serenest  resignation,  the  most  holy  and  beautiful  trust, 
like  the  smile  that  comes  across  the  face  of  the  dying  in 
response  to  greetings  not  of  this  world — "  Father,  into 
Thy  hands  I  commend  My  spirit."  The  other  welcomes 
the  end,  celebrates  the  triumph,  proclaims  that  the  death 
accomplished  is  the  work  done — "  It  is  finished."  In  the 
first,  He  confesses  that  God  has  not  forsaken  Him,  that  the 
eternal  hands  are  round  His  spirit  and  the  eternal  face 
brooding  over  His  uplifted  soul;  in  the  second.  He  declares 
that  sin  is  not  victorious,  that  He  is,  that  its  evil  has  but 
helped  the  completion  of  His  work.  And  fitly,  with  the 
double  testimony,  "  He  bows  His  head  and  gives  up  the 
ghost."  He  dies  on  the  cross,  but  not  by  it.  Men  marvel 
that  His  struggle  is  so  soon  over;  pierce  His  side,  and 
show  to  the  reverence  and  love  of  all  ages  that — He  died 
of  a  broken  heart.  And  they  love  Him,  and  are  con- 
strained by  His  love  to  live  not  unto  themselves,  but  unto 
"  Him  who  died  for  them  and  rose  again." 


XVIII. 
THE  RESURRECTION. 

The  Resurrection  of  Christ  is  in  the  Christian  system  a 
cardinal  fact,  one  of  the  great  hinges  on  which  it  turns. 
Certain  miracles  have  only  an  accidental,  while  others 
possess  an  essential  value.  The  first  are  but  incidents  in 
the  gospel  history ;  the  second  belong  to  its  essence,  con- 
stitute, as  it  were,  its  substance.  The  accidental  miracles 
are  those  Christ  did,  but  the  essential  are  those  constituted 
by  His  person  or  realized  in  it.  The  former  enrich  and 
adorn  the  evangelical  narratives;  while  their  loss  would 
impoverish  the  setting  of  the  evangelical  facts,  it  need  not 
abolish  their  reality.  But  the  latter  make  the  very  matter 
believed — are  the  gospel.  Then,  too,  the  essential  may 
involve  the  accidental,  but  the  accidental  do  not  neces- 
sarily involve  the  essential.  So  long  as  Jesus  remains  the 
risen  Christ,  the  Child  of  Mary,  but  the  Son-of  God,  He  is 
by  His  very  nature  so  supernatural  that  His  normal  action 
can  hardty  be  ordinary ;  the  miraculous  to  us  must  be  the 
natural  to  Him.  But  were  the  essential  miracles  denied 
and  the  accidental  affirmed,  it  would  be  as  if  the  trees  were 
cut  down  to  get  at  the  fruit,  or  the  main  figures  of  a  picture 
erased  to  let  the  background  be  seen — the  creative  source 
would  perish,  the  end  which  required  and  determined  the 
others*  existence  would  cease. 

The  essential  miracles  may  be  said  to  be  three — the 
Birth,  the  Person,  and  the  Resurrection.  These  all  stand 
indissolubly  together;  partition  is  impossible.     A  super- 


332  STUDIES  IN  THE  LTFE  OF  CHRIST. 

natural  person  cannot  be  the  result  of  natural  processes, 
or  be  the  victim  of  a  natural  destiny.  He  is,  by  the  very 
terms  of  his  being,  above  what  the  forces  of  nature  can 
produce,  and  above  what  they  can  destroy.  Whatever, 
therefore,  tends  to  prove  the  Person  of  Christ  miraculous 
tends  to  make  alike  the  supernatural  Birth  and  the  Resur- 
rection more  credible.  On  the  other  hand,  whatever  tends 
to  vindicate  the  reality  of  the  supernatural  in  these  events 
tends  to  make  the  miraculous  Person  at  once  more  con- 
ceivable and  more  real.  We  have  already  seen  how  the 
conception  of  the  Person  justifies  the  belief  in  miracles; 
we  have  now  to  see  how  a  miracle  may  justify  and  confirm 
the  idea  of  the  Person. 

Of  the  two  supernatural  events  just  specified,  the  Resur- 
rection alone  is  capable  of  distinct  historical  proof  or  dis- 
proof. The  other,  which  culmj'nated  in  the  birth,  is  not. 
There  we  must  believe,  we  cannot  know.  Where  and  when 
and  to  whom  the  Child  came  can  be  known,  but  into  what 
lies  behind  sight  cannot  go,  faith  alone  can.  But  the 
Eesurrection,  however  extraordinary,  can  be  dealt  with  as 
an  historical  fact.  All  the  forces  creating  its  opportunity 
can  be  traced,  the  witnesses  for  it  examined,  its  evidence 
sifted,  compared,  weighed.  By  what  we  may  term  a 
Divine  instinct  its  pre-eminent  importance  was  understood 
at  the  very  first.  It  was  the  fact  which  the  oldest  Chris- 
tian testimony  placed  ever  in  the  forefront ;  it  was  every- 
where confessed  as  the  reality  on  which  the  Church  was 
built,  and  which  it  could  not  afford  to  forget.  The  apostles 
were  its  witnesses,  existed  to  preach  it.  Had  it  not  hap- 
pened they  would  have  had  no  mission,  would  never  have 
been  what  they  were.  The  Resurrection  created  the 
Church,  the  risen  Christ  made  Christianity ;  and  even  now 
the  Christian  faith  stands  or  falls  with  Him.  The  Resur- 
rection is  a  resume  of  historical  yet  supernatural  Chris- 
tianity.    If  Christ  be  not  risen  our  faith  is  vain.     If  it 


THE  RESURRECTION  333 

be  proved  that  no  living  Christ  ever  issued  from  the  tomb 
of  Joseph,  then  that  tomb  becomes  the  grave  not  of  a  man 
but  of  a  rehgion,  with  all  the  hopes  built  on  it'  and  all  the 
splendid  enthusiasms  it  has  inspired. 

The  story  of  the  Resurrection  is  one  of  exquisite  pathos 
and  beauty.  The  crucifixion  had  created  despair,  had 
smitten  the  shepherd  and  scattered  the  sheep.  The  cry 
had  gone  forth,  **  Leave  Him  alone ;  every  man  to  his  own." 
In  loving  secresy  and  weeping  silence  the  faithful  few  had 
removed  the  body  from  the  cross  and  laid  it  in  the  new 
tomb  of  Joseph.  The  great  feast  came,  and  while  Jerusa- 
lem held  holyday  the  disciples  had  to  bear  as  best  they 
might  their  bitter  shame  and  ruined  hopes.  But  the 
women  could  not  forget  the  marred  visage,  now  rigid  in 
death,  but  once  so  expressive  of  holy  and  beautiful  life, 
and,  with  characteristic  devotion,  waited  to  seize  the 
earliest  moment  to  look  on  it  once  more,  before  the  effac- 
ing fingers  of  decay  had  swept  the  lines  of  its  lingering 
beauty,  and  in  the  little,  yet  to  the  living  great  and  helpful, 
ministries  of  tender,  regretful  affection,  at  once  express  and 
relieve  the  sorrow  that  burdened  their  hearts.  So  in  the 
dim  dawn  of  the  morning  after  the  sabbath  they  stole  to 
the  tomb,  but  only  to  find  in  it  no  buried  Lord.  They 
never  thought  of  a  Resurrection  ;  thought  only,  "  the  grave 
has  been  rifled ; "  and  one  fled  in  an  anguished  woman's 
way,  blind  to  eveiything  but  her  awful  loss,  crying,  "  They 
have  taken  away  my  Lord.'*  But  the  angels  within  the 
tomb  and  the  Lord  without  made  the  tear-blinded  woman 
and  the  sense-bound  men  slowly  awake  to  the  strange  glad 
fact,  "  He  is  risen,  as  He  said."  "  God  has  not  allowed 
His  Holy  One  to  see  corruption."  In  that  tomb,  the 
gloomiest  earth  had  known,  because  the  grave  of  the 
Holiest  known  to  earth,  a  torch  had  been  lighted  that 
niade  sable  death  luminous,  and  forced  from  him  his  dread 
secret,  translating  it  into  Resurrection  and  Life.    And  so 


334  STUDIES  IN  THE  IIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

there  was  set  under  the  weak  but  wishful  feet  of  hope,  no 
instinct  of  the  human  heart,  or  inference  of  the  human 
reason,  but  the  strong  rock  of  historical  yet  eternal  fact — 
the  Person  of  the  risen  Christ. 

Before  attempting  to  discuss  the  historical  and  critical 
questions  involved,  it  may  be  as  well  to  glance  at  the 
beautiful  and  exalted  ideal  truths  which  find  in  the  Resur- 
rection their  fittest  expression.  For  it  is  not  an  arbitrary 
and  violent  fact,  standing  in  sharp  contradiction  to  the 
spiritual,  which  are  the  true  regnant,  forces  of  the  universe ; 
nor  is  it  an  irrational  unconnected  event,  whose,  only  right 
to  be  believed  is  that  it  happened.  It  is  the  sublime 
symbol,  perhaps  rather  prophetic  realization,  of  truths 
which  the  colder  intellect  of  the  world  has  doubted  and 
criticised,  fearing  they  were  too  good  to  be  true,  but  which 
its  warmer  heart  has  everywhere  victoriously  striven  to 
believe.  Man  is  not  born  to  die,  and  death,  though 
universal,  has  not  quenched  his  belief  in  his  own  immortal 
being.  There  is  no  fact  of  human  experience  so  remark- 
able, so  significant  of  the  power  of  the  reason  to  command, 
to  conquer,  and  to  defy  the  senses.  The  intelligible  world 
is  created  from  within,  not  from  without;  what  man  believes 
he  believes  in  obedience  to  the  laws  of  mind,  often  in  rigorous 
opposition  to  the  alien  and  inhuman  forces  of  matter. 
And  this  is  nowhere  so  vividly  seen  as  when  he  stands 
throughout  all  tlie  centuries  of  his  history  daring,  in  the 
very  face  of  death,  to  believe  in  his  own  continued  being. 
An  experience  as  old  and  as  universal  as  the  race  has  not 
been  able  to  compel  the  reason  to  regard  the  grave  as  its 
end,  or  physical  dissolution  as  meaning  annihilation  of 
spirit.  Death  man  can  better  explain  as  the  result  of  his 
own  wrong  than  as  the  rightful  and  ultimate  lord  of  life, 
allowed  to  reign  only  that  it  may  by  chastising  the  more 
completely  reform  him,  by  dissolving  the  body  the  more 
perfectly  liberate  the  soul.     And  so  he  has  ever  tended  to 


THE  RESURRECTION,  335 

believe  that  where  man*s  sin  is  not,  death's  reign  must 
cease,  where  his  wrong  has  no  place,  its  dominion  can  have 
no  force.  And  thus  when  One  is  born  into  our  common 
lot,  not  as  a  simple  link  to  bind  the  generations  each  to 
each,  but  to  become  a  Sinless  Personality,  to  be  the  only 
holy  Person  of  the  race,  then  it  would  be  but  according  to 
the  nature  which  God  animates,  according  to  the  spiritual 
ends  for  which  all  material  things  exist,  that  He  achieve 
the  victory  over  death.  He  must  achieve  it  if  the  moral 
is  to  remain  the  supreme  power,  if  brute  force  is  not  to  be- 
come mightier  than  spirit  and  reason.  By  achieving  it  He 
becomes  the  symbol  of  what  God  is  aiming  at — the  prophecy 
of  what  God  will  do.  If  death  come  to  Him  by  wicked 
hands,  what  they  do  God  must  undo,  that  righteousness 
may  not  perish  or  human  hope  die*  wearied  with  the 
greatness  of  its  way.  Over  the  reason  that  remains  Divine 
even  while  incarnate,  death  cannot  be  victor ;  may  be 
allowed  to  seem  to  triumph,  but  only  that  it  may  be  the 
more  utterly  broken  and  defeated.  The  vitality  of  God  can 
never  fall  before  the  breath  of  mortality.  And  so  Jesus, 
while  He  dies  upon  the  cross,  dies  only  to  issue  from  the 
grave,  on  the  one  side,  a  response  to  the  prayers  of  mortals, 
conscious  that  they  ought  to  be  immortal,  on  the  other, 
the  victorious  proof  for  all  time  that  He  who  made  our 
spirits  will,  when  our  spirits  are  what  He  made  them  to  be, 
draw  them  out  of  cold  and  desolate  death  back  into  the 
light  of  His  countenance,  to  their  eternal  home  in  His 
bosom. 

The  Resurrection  of  Christ  raises  many  questions, 
philosophical,  historical,  literary,  and  critical.  The  philo- 
sophical question  is  general,  refers  to  the  possibility  and 
credibility  of  miracles ;  but  the  others  are  particular,  con- 
cern the  reality  and  proof  of  this  special  fact,  the  authen- 
ticity, truth,  consistency,  credibility  of  the  narratives,  the 
veracity,  qualifications,  trustworthiness  of  the  witnesses,  the 


336  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIEE  OF  CHRIST. 

nature,  validity,  sufficiency,  or  insufBciency  of  the  evidences. 
The  philosophical  question  it  is  not  necessary  to  discuss ; 
it  would  carry  us  too  far  into  simple  and  assumed  first 
principles.  Miracles  are  supernatural,  and  indeed  im- 
possible to  a  nature  without  God,  but  possible  and  indeed 
natural  to  a  nature  with  Him.  To  Theism  nature  exists 
for  God,  God  does  not  exist  for  nature.  It  is  the  arena 
on  which  He  is  working  out  His  purpose,  and  the  arena 
must  be  subordinated  to  the  purpose,  not  the  purpose  to 
the  arena.  Nature  and  history  must  be  interpreted 
through  our  idea  of  God,  rather  than  our  idea  of  God 
through  scientific  and  empirical  ideas  of  nature  and  history. 
Denial  of  the  possibility  of  miracles  is  possible,  then,  only 
where  there  is  denial  of  the  being  and  personality  of  God, 
or,  what  is  equivalent,  where  nature  is  made  His  God,  and 
its  laws  the  bars  of  the  prison  within  which  He  is  con- 
fined. But  with  this  theistic  problem  we  are  not  now  con- 
cerned, and  allude  to  it  mainly  to  protest  that,  measured 
by  our  idea  of  God,  the  Resurrection  of  Christ  is  neither 
miraculous  nor  supernatural,  but  normal  and  natural,  an 
event  in  finest  harmony  with  His  character  and  the  attri- 
butes that  determine  His  ends.  Our  immediate  concern  is 
with  the  particular  questions,  and  we  must  endeavour  so  to 
conduct  the  discussion  as  to  cover  as  nearly  as  possible 
the  whole  field. 

The  question  may  be  discussed  either  from  the  sub- 
jective or  the  objective  side.  The  men  either  did  or  did 
not  believe  that  Christ  rose  from  the  dead.  If  they  did  not, 
the  whole  thing  was  a  fabrication,  the  story  an  invention 
from  beginning  to  end.  There  must  have  been  falsehood 
of  the  most  daring  and  deliberate  kind,  aided  by  the  most 
credulous  folly.  The  men  who  had  the  audacity  to  concoct 
the  story  would  be  audacious  enough  to  steal  and  conceal 
the  body,  and  so  to  tell  their  tale  as  to  win  the  faith  of  the 
simple-minded  people  who  are  always  only  too  willing  to  be 


THE  RESURRECTION.  337 

deceived.  This  is  the  sort  of  theory  against  which  Paley's 
argument  of  the  twelve  honest  men  is  absolutely  conclu- 
sive. Happily,  it  is  not  one  that  need  now  be  argued 
against.  If  any  hold  it,  it  can  only  be  the  utterly  illiterate. 
The  man  capable  of  believing  it  is  a  man  incapable  of  being 
reasoned  with,  too  passionful  of  nature  to  be  either  rational 
or  just.  A  sane  and  honourable  and  informed  spirit  could 
never  either  conceive  or  believe  such  a  theory.  That  a 
company  of  men  could  be  confederate  in  evil  for  purposes 
of  good ;  that  they  could  be  throughout  life  a  society  of 
organized  hypocrites  without  ever  smiling  to  each  other, 
or  letting  the  mask  fall ;  that  they  could  preach  virtue  or 
live  virtuously  with  a  damning  lie  on  their  consciences ; 
that  they  could  nurse  their  souls,  most  of  all  in  the  very 
face  of  death,  in  the  hope  of  being  with  Christ  for  ever  in 
blessedness,  while  aware  that  He  was  rotting  in  an  un- 
known grave — are  positions  that  involve  so  many  psycho- 
logical impossibilities  that  any  grave  discussion  of  the 
matter  would  simply  be  absurd.  Criticism  must  postulate 
the  honesty  of  the  witnesses ;  without  it  the  history  is  not 
one  any  reason  can  handle,  or  out  of  which  any  good  can 
come. 

The  witnesses,  then,  did  believe  that  Christ  rose  from 
the  dead.  In  this  belief  they  were  absolutely  honest,  were 
as  certain  that  Christ  had  risen  as  that  they  themselves 
lived  and  preached  in  His  name.  But  honesty  of  belief  is 
no  proof  of  the  reality  of  the  thing  believed.  The  possi- 
bilities of  mistake  are  almost  infinite,  and  the  honest  belief 
of  fictions  is  as  common  as  the  honest  belief  of  facts.  The 
honesty  saves  the  character  of  the  believer,  but  not  of  the 
thing  believed.  Modern  criticism  unreservedly  accepts  the 
truth  and  reality  of  the  apostolic  belief.  That  its  historical 
sense  is  too  sure  and  too  keen  to  question  or  doubt  for  a 
moment.     Baur's  position  was  this  :  ^  the  Church  is  inex- 

*  Kircheiio;eschichte  der  drei  ersien  Jahrhumiertey  pp.  39, 40.  English 
Trans,  pp.  42,  43. 


338  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

plicable  without  the  belief  in  the  Resurrection  ;  it  supplied 
Christianity  with  a  firm  basis  for  its  development.  But 
what  history  requires  is  not  so  much  the  reality  of  the 
Resurrection  as  the  belief  that  it  was  real.  How  the  be- 
lief became  real,  whether  by  an  objective  miracle  or  a  sub- 
jective psychological  process,  is  of  minor  importance  ;  the 
grand  thing  is  that  the  Resurrection  became  a  fact  to  the 
apostolic  consciousness,  and  had  to  it  all  the  reality  of  an 
historical  event. 

But  this  position  is  unscientific  and  inconclusive.  It 
can  as  little  satisfy  the  claims  of  historical  science  as  of 
Christian  faith ;  both  must  equally  strive  after  the  truth 
of  the  matter  and  be  contented  only  when  face  to  face  with 
it.  Science  can  never  be  sure  that  it  knows  either  Christ 
or  Christianity  till  it  has  ascertained  whether  He  rose  or 
did  not  rise ;  and  if  He  did  not,  by  what  psychological 
process  so  many  honest  men  came  to  believe  that  He  did, 
and  so  to  believe  it  as  to  persuade  the  civilized  world  to 
be  of  their  mind.  Faith  can  never  be  satisfied  with  a 
theory  that  leaves  it  uncertain  whether  its  most  transcendent 
fact  was  an  objective  reality  or  the  creation  of  a  psycho- 
logical process,  which  is  but  an  euphonius  paraphrase  for 
the  dream  or  delusion  of  a  too  credulous  and  visionary 
mind.  It  must  ask,  What  is  it  that  I  believe,  a  reality  or 
an  imagination  ?  The  subjective  thus  necessarily  falls 
over  into  an  objective  inquiry,  each,  indeed,  when  it  be- 
comes fundamental,  involving  the  other.  The  question, 
then,  in  its  objective,  which  will  also  be  found  to  raise  all 
the  issues  of  the  subjective,  form,  is  this  :  Did  the  Resur- 
rection of  Christ  happen  or  did  it  not  ?  Is  it  or  is  it  not 
an  historical  fact  ?  To  the  question  so  stated  there  are 
three  possible  answers.     Either — 

I.  Christ  did  not  die  on  the  cross,  only  swooned,  and 
afterwards  reviving  in  the  grave,  issued  from  it  and  ap- 
peared to  His  disciples  in  His  proper  physical  form  ;  or— 


THE  RESURRECTION.  339 

2.  He  died  and  did  not  rise  ;  or — 

3.  He  died  and  rose. 

These  questions  we  will  now  discuss  in  succession. 

1.  Jesus  did  not  die  on  the  cross,  only  swooned ;  and  re- 
viving in  the  grave,  issued  from  it,  appeared  to  His  disciples, 
and  was  by  them  regarded  as  having  risen  from  death. 
Astonishing  as  it  may  seem,  this  theory  has  had  its  advo- 
cates, and  may  have  its  advocates  still.  It  existed  in  two 
forms,  a  more  and  a  less  gross.  The  one  made  Jesus  feign 
death  for  the  express  purpose  of  making  His  reappearance 
seem  a  resurrection,  another  made  the  swoon  real,  the  result 
of  exhaustion  and  agony,  from  which  He  was  restored  by 
the  cool  atmosphere  of  the  tomb  and  the  stimulating  fra- 
grance of  the  spices.  But  no  conjecture  could  be  more 
gratuitous,  absurd,  impossible.  The  mere  physical  diffi- 
culties are  insuperable.  That  a  person  exhausted,  wounded, 
half-dead,  in  need  of  delicate  nursing,  of  quiet  and  rest, 
of  choice  and  strengthening  food,  with  bleeding  feet  and  a 
pierced  side  and  a  body  shaken  and  out  of  joint,  should  be 
able  to  steal  out  of  the  sepulchre,  escape  the  vigilance  and 
merciless  malice  of  His  enemies,  represent  Himself  to  His 
disheartened  and  scattered  friends  as  the  victor  over  death 
and  the  grave,  is  conceivable  only  as  a  series  of  cumulative 
absurdities  that  would  be  merrily  ridiculous  were  they  not 
so  terribly  profane.  Such  an  appearance  had  appalled  the 
men  that  witnessed  it,  frightened  out  of  them  the  little  faith 
and  hope  that  remained.  And  as  on  to  this  supposition 
the  half-dead  Jesus  did  soon  die,  was  dying  all  the  while 
He  was  appearing  to  the  men  He  had  known,  the  only 
conviction  He  could  have  left  must  have  been  of  a  broken 
and  vanquished  life  lingering  into  hideous  death.  It  is 
impossible  to  believe  that  from  any  such  miserable  source 
the  faith  in  the  Resurrection  could  have  been  derived. 

2.  Christ  died  and  did  not  rise.  This  theory  seems  to 
have  the  merit  of  simplicity  and  definiteness,  and  may  be 


340  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

said  to  be  built  on  two  positions ;  first,  that  history  can 
recognize  no  miracle,  and  must  regard  the  events  it  seeks 
to  explain  and  describe  as  natural,  happening  according 
to  known  or  discoverable  laws  ;  and,  secondly,  that  the 
evidences  in  this  case  are  entirely  inadequate,  the  narra- 
tives inconsistent,  the  testimonies  perplexed,  confused, 
often  contradictory.  Now,  for  reasons  already  stated,  the 
first  position  need  not  be  discussed  here.  It  is  a  question 
of  first  principles ;  it  entirely  depends  on  the  philosophy 
of  the  historian  whether  miracles  are  or  are  not  to  him 
impossible.  The  best  history  is  the  history  without  dog- 
matic assumptions,  that  does  not  determine  beforehand 
what  must  or  must  not  be,  but  simply  examines  what  has 
been  or  is.  As  to  the  second  position,  it  will  be  discussed 
later  on,  and  meanwhile  we  simply  note  that  on  one  point 
there  is  perfect  agreement,  the  reality  and  the  sincerity  of 
the  belief  in  the  Resurrection  of  Christ.  No  modern  critic 
questions  it,  or  doubts  that  without  it  the  history  of  the 
Church  had  been  impossible.  But  now,  how  is  the  origin  of 
the  belief  to  be  explained  ?  by  what  mental  or  psychological 
process  was  it  created  ?  The  problem  is  very  complex, 
and  as  delicate  as  complex.  There  is  the  question  as  to 
the  first  inception  of  the  belief — how  a  notion  so  extra- 
ordinary as  that  Christ  had  risen  or  could  rise  first  came 
to  be  entertained.  Then,  why  was  it  that  it  did  not  remain 
singular,  but  became  general — the  faith  not  of  one  excited 
and  credulous  person,  but  of  many  sane  and  doubtful  men  ? 
And  how  was  it  that  it  exercised  over  the  men  an  influence 
at  once  so  sober  and  rationalizing,  and  so  inspiring  and 
determinative  ?  Why,  too,  was  the  belief  so  primitive  and, 
as  it  were,  aboriginal,  flourishing  at  the  centre,  on  the 
very  spot  and  in  the  very  city  where  Christ  had  died  ?  These 
and  many  similar  points  are  so  hard  to  resolve,  and  start 
so  many  difficulties,  that  Baur  was  content  to  leave  the 
matter  in  a,  for  him,  curiously  nebulous  state,  certain  only 


THE  RESURRECTION.  341 

that  the  faith  was  real,  entirely  uncertain  how  it  became 
so.*  But  later  inquirers  could  not  rest  where  he  did.  An 
event  that  happens  by  an  unexplained  or  inexplicable  pro- 
cess is  to  history  little  better  than  a  miracle ;  and  so  the 
criticism  that  denies  miracles  could  not  feel  satisfied  of 
having  achieved  anything  scientific  until  it  had  discovered 
and  described  the  psychological  process  by  which  a  real 
belief  in  an  unreal  event  was  possible  and  became  actual. 
Clearly  this  is  the  cardinal  problem — granted  the  honesty 
of  the  witnesses  and  the  reality  of  their  belief,  how,  on  the 
supposition  that  Christ  died  and  did  not  rise,  did  they 
come  by  their  belief?  and  how  did  it  come  to  wield  such 
a  tremendous  power  over  them,  and  through  them  over  the 
Church  and  over  mankind  ?  This  problem  has  been  at- 
tempted to  be  solved  by  two  dissimilar  yet  related  theories, 
which  we  may  name  respectively  the  phantasmal  and  the 
visional.     Let  us  see  with  what  success. 

I.  The  Phantasmal. — The  theory  so  named  we  owe 
to  the  brilliant  and  fertile  imagination  of  M.  Renan.  It  is 
one  no  other  modern  scholar  and  critic  is  capable  of  con- 
ceiving, and  unfolding  in  grave  and  graceful  sentences.  It 
is  so  strongly  marked  by  his  peculiar  idiosyncrasies  that  it 
is  fully  as  interesting  for  the  light  it  sheds  on  M.  Renan, 
as  for  its  significance  as  a  serious  attempt  to  explain  the 

*  For  this  indecision  Strauss,  in  one  of  his  fiercer  moments,  rather 
truculently  assailed  Baur.  It  was,  perhaps,  in  his  old  pupil's  eyes  the 
cardinal  sin  he  committed  while  using  the  historical  interest  as  a  de- 
fence against  fanaticism,  like  the  legal  fiction  which  sacrifices  the 
Ministry  to  save  the  Crown.  But,  curiously  enough,  Baur  owed  the  idea 
to  Strauss,  who  had  many  years  before,  in  the  apologies  for  his  first 
Leben  Jesu^  expressly  and  earnestly  maintained  that  the  great  point 
was  more  the  reality  of  the  faith  than  the  reality  of  the  fact.  {Streit- 
schrijten^  Part  I.  pp.  33-48  ;  Part  III.  p.  41).  But  Strauss  changed 
with  the  changing  times.  Baur  never  ceased  to  labour  on  his  own 
lines  constructively  at  primitive  Christianity  ;  but  Strauss  became  ever 
more  dogmatic  in  his  negations,  and  less  patient  of  historical  methodsi 
with  the  uncertainties  and  anxieties  they  necessarily  involve. 


342  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

origin  of  our  belief.  It  starts  from  this  position — the 
creative  power  of  enthusiasm  and  love.  They  play  with 
the  impossible,  and,  rather  than  abandon  hope,  will  do 
violence  to  all  reality.'  Heroes  do  not  die,  and  God  could 
not  allow  His  Son  to  see  death.*  The  immortality  of  the 
soul  was  a  Greek  idea,  not  clear  to  the  Jews ;  their  notion 
was  the  kingdom  of  God,  which  consisted  in  the  renova- 
tion of  the  world  and  the  annihilation  of  death.  The 
disciples  could  not  believe  that  He  who  had  come  to  in- 
stitute the  kingdom  could  be  the  vanquished  of  the  grave ; 
and  so  they  had  no  choice  between  despair  and  an  heroic 
affirmation  ^ — which  is  a  very  fine  phrase  for  not  so  fine  a 
thing.  The  heroic  affirmation  was  chosen ;  the  little 
Christian  society  worked  the  veritable  miracle,  raised  Jesus 
from  the  dead  in  its  heart  by  the  intense  love  which  it  bore 
to  Him.  The  creative  spirit  was  Mary  of  Magdala ;  she 
made  the  faith  of  the  future.*  She  was  an  imaginative 
creature  —  had  once  been  possessed  of  seven  devils.^ 
When  she  came  to  the  tomb,  the  stone  was  rolled  away, 
the  body  gone  ;  surprise  and  grief  seized  her,  crossed,  per- 
haps, by  a  gleam  of  hope.  Without  losing  a  moment  she 
ran  for  Peter  and  John.  They  examine  the  tomb,  and 
depart ;  she  remains  before  it  weeping,  possessed  by  the 
thought.  Where  have  they  laid  Him  ?  Suddenly  she  hears 
a  light  noise  behind  her,  and  thinks,  *'  'Tis  a  man,  the 
gardener,"  and  cries,  "  Where  have  ye  taken  my  Lord  ?  " 
For  answer  she  hears  the  old  familiar  voice  say,  *'  Mary!  " 
*'  O  my  Master  !  "  she  cries,  and  turns  to  touch  Him  ;  He 
forbids,  and  His  shade  gradually  disappears.  *'  But  the 
miracle  of  love  is  accomplished.  What  Peter  was  un- 
equal to,  Mary  has  done."  ^  "  Peter  saw  only  the  empty 
tomb  ;  Mary  alone  so  loved  as  to  surpass  nature,  raise  and 
vivify  the  phantom  of  the  gentle  and  beautiful  Master." 

*  Les  ApStres,  p.  2.  3  Ibid.  p.  5.  s  Ibid.  p.  11. 

2  Ibid.  pp.  3,  4.  4  Ibid.  p.  7.  *lbid.  p.  11. 


THE  RESURRECTION,  343 

In  such  marvellous  crises,  to  see  after  another  is  nothing ; 
who  sees  first  has  all  the  merit.'  And  so  the  glory  of  the 
Resurrection  belongs  to  Mary;  after  Jesus,  she  did  the 
most  for  the  foundation  of  Christianity,  and  has,  as  became 
the  queen  and  patroness  of  idealists,  imposed  on  all  the 
sainted  the  vision  of  her  impassioned  soul.*  Ecstasy  is 
contagious.  What  she  has  seen  the  others  see.  The 
society  is  conquered  in  detail.  Each  section,  women  and 
men  alike,  has  its  own  separate  vision,  tells  its  separate 
tale,  and  swells  the  general  excitement.  As  they  are 
gathered  together  with  imaginations  made  vivid  by  these 
weird  tales,  the  wind  breathed  in  their  faces,  and  lo  !  it  be- 
came His  voice  murmuring  **  peace."  "  In  these  decisive 
moments  a  current  of  air,  a  window  which  creaked,  a 
chance  murmur,  fixed  for  ages  the  belief  of  the  peoples."  ^ 
And  thus  was  crowned  and  completed  the  achievement  of 
the  Magdalene. 

Such  is  the  theory  stated,  in  all  sobriety  of  spirit,  with 
all  his  wonted  brilliance  of  style,  by  M.  Renan.  But  we 
have  here  to  do  with  it  simply  as  a  professedly  scientific 
and  veracious  account  of  how  the  faith  in  the  Resurrection 
came  into  being.  Can  we  regard  it  as  what  it  professes  to 
be  ?  Well,  then,  its  first  and  cardinal  defect  is  evident — 
it  does  not  save  the  honesty  of  the  men.  It  reduces  them 
to  a  society  of  fools,  whose  folly  was  all  the  deeper  that  it 
was  so  knavish.  They  behave  like  a  circle  of  hysterical 
women,  no  one  having  sanity  enough  to  ask  whether  their 
alarms  or  their  joys  were  real.  The  men  believed  because 
they  wished  to  believe,  and  by  an  utter  suppression  of 
reason  and  rational  inquiry.  Then,  the  body  of  Jesus  was 
gone — whither  ?  and  by  what  means?  It  must  have  been 
removed  ;  more  than  one  must  have  been  concerned  in 
its  removal — why  were  they  silent  ?  If  foes  had  removed 
it,  how  they  could   have   crushed   the   nascent   belief!  if 

*  Les  ApotreSy  p.  12.  «  Ibid.  p.  13.  3  Ibid.  p.  22. 


344  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

friends,  they  could  be  silent  in  its  presence  only  by  con- 
scious and  wicked  conspiracy.  The  enemies  were  too 
thoroughly  bent  on  suppression  to  allow  so  dangerous  a 
belief  to  take  root  while  they  had  irresistible  evidence  of 
its  utter  falsity  ;  the  circle  of  friends  was  too  limited  to 
permit  any  single  member  to  remain  ignorant  of  the  new 
belief  and  untouched  by  the  new  enthusiasm.  In  either 
case,  therefore,  knowledge  of  what  had  become  of  the  body 
could  not  fail  to  reach  the  disciples,  and  only  their  silence 
could  allow  the  fiction  to  be  believed  as  fact.  But  con- 
nivance in  a  deception  so  enormous  was  at  such  a  moment 
morally  impossible.  Enthusiasm  was  necessary  to  the  life 
of  the  belief;  but  conscious  deceivers,  while  they  may 
imitate  an  old  ideal,  cannot  create  a  new  enthusiasm  or 
form  a  new  religious  faith.  Men,  too,  who  are  smitten  to 
the  heart,  pierced  through  and  through  with  a  great 
sorrow,  are  too  earnest  to  be  insincere,  to  speak  a  cruel 
falsehood  to  their  own  and  other  consciences.  This,  indeed, 
is  one  of  the  many  cases  where  the  critic  proves  himself 
strangely  destitute  of  moral  sense  and  spiritual  insight ; 
and  so  but  little  able  to  read  the  transcendent  moments  of 
the  history  he  has  so  long  and  so  deeply  studied. 

But  further :  M.  Renan's  first  principle  is  false,  quite 
opposed  to  the  evidence.  Enthusiasm  and  love  are  crea- 
tive, but  what  of  the  love  without  the  enthusiasm,  with 
only  the  numbness  and  the  dumbness  of  new  and  desolat- 
ing loss  ?  Enthusiasm  is  creative  when  living,  imper- 
sonated, victorious ;  but  how  could  it  live  in  the  face  of 
the  cross,  the  symbol  of  utter  defeat,  and  of  the  tomb,  the 
symbol  of  corruption  and  decay  ?  Were  the  belief  created 
it  must  have  been  early,  while  the  sense  of  loss  was  deepest; 
but  the  sense  of  loss  means  simply  the  inability  to  create 
the  belief.  The  further  they  got  from  the  death,  the  less 
would  they  feel  the  need  of  the  living  Christ ;  the  nearer 
they  stood  to  the  cross,  the  less  able  were  they  to  imagine 


THE  RESURRECTION,  345 

the  Resurrection.  And  we  gather  as  much  fi  om  the  nar- 
ratives. They  prove,  if  they  prove  anything,  that  the 
state  of  expectancy  M.  Renan's  theory  requires  did  not 
exist.  Death  had  conquered,  and  before  his  iron  hand  and 
silent  lips  hope,  now  as  always,  ceased  to  live.  The  men 
who  had  lived  through  the  agony  of  the  last  two  days,  who 
had  seen  the  Roman  spear  do  its  work,  and  the  grave  re- 
ceive its  dead,  must  have  been  in  no  mood  to  be  carried 
away  by  the  tale  of  a  possessed  and  frenzied  woman,  who 
had  seen  a  ghost.  Expectant  minds  may  be  prone  to 
faith  ;  minds  doubtful  from  despair,  despondent  from  loss, 
are  the  most  deeply  incredulous. 

But  again :  the  theory  leaves  unexplained  the  most 
characteristic  thing  in  the  belief — its  remarkable  and 
altogether  unique  form.  The  conception  stands  absolutely 
alone ;  there  is  nothing  like  it  in  the  history  of  thought 
and  belief.  Many  societies  of  men  have  been  situated  as 
the  disciples  were,  and  have  created  curious  myths,  but  all 
the  myths  have  had  a  generic  character,  embody  ideas 
radically  unlike  those  embodied  in  the  Resurrection  of 
Christ.  The  Jews  believed  that  Enoch  and  Elijah  had 
not  died,  but  been  translated,  vanished  from  earth  into 
heaven.  Omar  might  rush,  sabre  in  hand,  from  the  tent 
where  the  body  of  Mohammed  lay,  declaring  that  he  would 
strike  off  the  head  of  the  man  who  should  say,  "  The  pro- 
phet is  dead."  The  Roman  world  might  live  in  the  fear 
that  the  terrible  Nero  was  yet  to  return  to  vex  and  disturb 
it.  Mediaeval  Germany  might  believe  that  Barbarossa  was 
asleep  in  his  mountain  cave,  and  would  yet  awake  and 
come  forth  to  restore  the  glories  of  the  empire  and  the 
house  of  Hohenstaufen.  Our  own  legends  might  tell  how 
Arthur  had  sailed  away  to  his  island  home  of  Avilion, 
whence,  when  happier  days  dawned,  he  would  come  to 
erect  his  table  round,  and  open  his  chaste  and  chivalrous 

court.     But  all  these  rest  on  similar  ideas,  speak  of  the 
23 


346  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST 

mythical  imagination,  as  they  speak  to  it.  Death  is  in  each 
case  denied  ;  the  men  can  return  because  they  have  escaped 
death,  and  are  only  absent  or  asleep.  But  here  it  is 
altogether  different.  Christ  dies — His  death  is  real,  abso- 
lute ;  He  is  buried,  going  down  into  the  very  grave.  And 
His  return  is  not  an  expected  thing.  He  has  escaped 
from  the  very  hands  of  death,  come  out  of  the  very  grave, 
and  has  done  so  before  the  eyes  of  the  men  that  knew^  Him 
best.  In  the  other  cases  the  contradiction  of  our  universal 
experience  is  apparent  rather  than  real,  but  here  it  is 
direct  and  absolute.  In  these,  death  is  eluded,  in  this,  it 
is  endured ;  there,  hope  is  because  life  is;  here,  the  belief 
rises,  as  it  were,  sheer  out  of  the  tomb.  Now,  how  are 
these  characteristics  to  be  explained  ?  M.  Renan  never 
sees  them,  never  feels  their  meaning,  yet  till  he  does  so  he 
has  not  even  grasped  the  problem  he  has  set  himself  to 
solve.  Where  the  problem  has  been  so  misconceived  its 
handling  may  have  an  aesthetic  or  personal  worth,  but  can 
have  no  rational  significance. 

2.  The  Visional. — This  is  a  much  more  scientific  and 
rational  theory  than  M.  Renan's.  Its  first  and  ablest  ex- 
ponent was  Holsten.  It  found  a  genial  interpreter  in  the 
late  Heinrich  Lang,  was  adopted  by  Strauss  in  the  Neues 
Leben^  and  has  been  accepted  by  the  author  of  Supernatural 
Religion.  Its  starting-point  is  this — Paul  does  not  make 
any  distinction  as  regards  nature  or  kind  between  Christ's 
appearance  to  himself  and  His  appearance  to  the  first  and 
earliest  witnesses.^  In  each  case  the  same  term  {a>(f)dr])  is 
used ;  in  each  the  same  reality,  the  same  evidential  and 
historical  value  is  attributed  to  the  appearance.  And  of 
what  kind  was  the  appearance  to  Paul  ?  It  was  a  vision, 
i.e.,  a  state  or  process  of  his  own  mind,  investing  with 
reality  what  was  not  real.  While  he  maintains  that  he  has 
seen  the  Lord,^  yet  in  the  history  of  his  conversion  he 
«  I  Cor.  XV.  5-8.  »  Ibid.  ix.  i  ;  xv.  I. 


THE  RESURRECTION.  347 

speaks  only  of  an  internal  revelation.*  His  was  a  nature 
prone  to  ecstasy,  and  so  visions  were  frequent  and  familiar 
to  him.2  In  immediate  connection  with  these  visions  he 
speaks  of  his  "  thorn  in  the  flesh,"  ^  just  as  if  they  stood  in 
some  relation  to  each  other.  Now,  by  an  ingenious  inter- 
pretation, this  "  thorn"  is  made  out  to  be  "  epilepsy,"  or 
some  form  of  nervous  disease,  which  made  him  peculiarly 
liable  to  visions  and  hallucinations.  To  this  physical 
tendency  he  owed  his  sight  of  Christ,  which  to  him  had 
all  the  effects  of  reality  while  purely  ideal.  And  from  his 
language  the  other  appearances  were  no  more  real,  all 
belong  to  the  same  category,  are  subjective,  not  objective 
phenomena,  were  creations  and  visions  of  the  mind. 

Now  this  is  a  much  more  scientific  and  rational  theory 
than  M.  Kenan's.  It  deals  with  the  matter  gravely,  is  ex- 
egetical,  psychological,  careful  in  its  analysis,  and  minute 
in  its  criticism — but  is  it  historical  ?  Well,  then,  the  first 
dubious  point  is  its  interpretation  of  Paul.  He  was  no 
diseased  visionary,  but  a  man  of  sane  strong  nature.  His 
admittedly  authentic  epistles  are  full  of  the  most  radiant 
sanity.  In  things  intellectual  his  reason  reigns,  in  things 
emotional  his  judgment.  No  man  was  ever  less  governed 
by  impulse,  more  by  firmly  grasped  principles.  When  he 
speculates,  there  is  no  cloud  on  his  intellect;  when  he 
reasons,  his  dialectic  is  dexterous,  his  logic  sharp  and  swift. 
The  ethical  are,  perhaps,  the  most  remarkable  parts  of  his 
epistles,  they  are  so  wise,  so  practical,  and  practicable,  yet 
they  are  so  really  magnanimous,  so  explicative  of  ideal 
relations  between  man  and  man.  In  his  conduct  to  the 
men  from  whom  he  differs  he  is  the  very  antipodes  of  a 
visionary.  Nervous  dislikes,  hatreds  without  reason,  be- 
haviour governed  by  petulance  or  passion  or  states  of 
physical  disease,  are  unknown  to  him.  His  difference  with 
Peter  at  Antioch,  his  view  of  the  Corinthian  parties  and 
'  Gal.  i.  13-17.  "  2  Cor.  xii.  1-5.         3  Ibid.  v.  7. 


348  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

mode  of  dealing  with  them,  his  most  complex  and  perplex- 
ing, yet  admirably  maintained  relations  to  the  Churches, 
his  power  of  work,  his  physical  vigour  and  extraordinary 
recuperative  energies  —  all  imply  qualities,  bodily  and 
mental,  utterly  incompatible  with  the  notion  that  he  was 
an  imaginative  epileptic.  The  Pauline  epistles  are  won- 
derful examples  of  unconscious  autobiography  ;  but  they 
are,  perhaps,  least  significant  of  the  man  where  he  is  most 
consciously  autobiographical.  There  is  a  proud  reserve  in 
him  which  makes  him  dislike  speech  about  himself,  and 
he  reveals  himself  least  where  he  writes  most  under  con- 
scious restraint.  The  Paul  of  the  visional  theory  is  not 
the  Paul  of  the  epistles,  but  of  a  few  texts  forced  into 
novel  relations  and  ingeniously  interpreted.  The  one  is 
too  sane  to  be  a  visionary,  but  the  other  is  a  vision  indeed. 
But  the  theory  is  open  to  other  and  graver  objections. 
It  fails  to  distinguish  sufficiently  between  the  mental 
attitude  of  Paul  and  that  of  the  earlier  witnesses.  His 
was  one  of  anticipation,  theirs  was  not.  He  knew  of 
the  belief  before  he  saw  the  Christ ;  it  was  in  his  mind, 
even  though  only  to  be  contradicted  and  denied.  But  the 
first  witnesses  did  not  find  the  belief;  it  found  and 
made  them.  Hence  their  belief  cannot  be  explained 
through  Paul's ;  his  must  be  explained  through  theirs. 
We  are,  therefore,  thrown  back  on  the  prior  question, 
How  did  they  come  by  the  belief?  And  it  cannot  be 
answered  without  a  discussion  of  the  evangelical  his- 
tories. And  on  this  ground  the  visional  theory  lies 
open  to  the  criticism  directed  against  M.  Kenan's.  Once 
it  comes  to  handle  the  facts,  the  explanation  built  on  its 
Pauline  psychology  ceases  to  be  applicable.  Visions 
come  only  where  there  is  distance,  expectancy,  and 
creative  enthusiasm  ;  they  come  not  to  minds  face  to  face 
with  hard,  sensuous  facts,  minds  desolate,  despondent, 
irresolute,  divided.     The  very   reasons   that   render    the 


THE  RESURRECTION.  349 

theory  applicable  to  the  mind,  once  the  belief  has  come 
into  possession,  render  it  inapplicable  before  the  belief 
has  come  to  be.  The  laws  or  factors  that  operate  in 
periods  of  ecstasy  and  exaltation  do  not  exist  in  periods 
of  desolation  and  dismay.  Where  there  is  an  exultant 
belief  in  the  Resurrection,  visional  appearances  are  not 
only  possible  but  inevitable ;  but  where  there  is  no  such 
belief,  how  are  they  to  be  explained  ?  Where  the  creative 
conditions  are  absent,  how  can  the  creation  arise  ? 

We  reach,  then,  the  conclusion  that,  on  the  terms 
fixed  and  defined  by  modern  criticism,  there  is,  on  the 
supposition  that  Christ  did  not  rise  from  the  dead,  no 
sufficient  explanation  of  the  origin  of  our  belief.  It  is 
impossible  to  account  for  it  and  yet  save  the  honesty 
and  rationality  of  the  men.  We  must,  then,  seek  the 
explanation  along  another  line,  and  this  brings  us  to  our 
next  position — 

3.  Christ  died  and  did  rise.  — -  Let  us  see,  then, 
whether  there  be  evidence  to  sustain  this  position ;  in 
other  words,  whether  the  belief  necessarily  leads  back 
to  this  as  its  only  and  sufficient  cause.  Here,  indeed, 
a  plea  may  be  entered  in  bar  of  argument  or  further 
proof.  The  witnesses  do  not  always  agree ;  their  testi- 
monies are  often  inconsistent  and  discrepant.  But  to 
what  extent  do  they  disagree  ?  Of  what  nature  is  their 
discrepancies  ?  Do  they  extend  to  cardinal  or  essential 
matters  ?  or  do  they  concern  simply  points  of  detail  ?  On 
details  they  are  discrepant ;  on  the  cardinal  matter  there 
is  absolute  and  emphatic  agreement.  Independent  testi- 
monies are,  where  thoroughly  independent,  made  more  not 
less  credible  by  differences  in  detail.  They  prove  conspiracy 
or  concoction  impossible ;  each  new  witness  is  a  distinct 
and  independent  voice,  not  a  mere  echo  of  his  neighbour's. 
Standpoints  differ,  and  where  the  same  thing  has  been 
seen  from   many  and  dissimilar  standpoints,  their  con- 


350  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

current  testimonies  are  strengthened  by  the  varieties  in 
their  respective  narratives.  Instead,  therefore,  of  seeking 
to  minimize  the  discrepancies,  let  us  acknowledge  their 
existence  to  the  full,  and  proceed  at  once  to  examine 
the  evidences  for  the  historical  origin  of  the  belief. 

Let  us  start,  then,  from  this  point : — The  Resurrection 
of  Christ  is  the  most  prominent,  the  most  distinctly 
emphasized,  fact  in  the  New  Testament ;  one,  too,  as 
regards  which  there  is,  amid  almost  every  possible  variety 
of  detail,  on  all  hands  the  most  absolute  agreement. 
No  one  denies  it ;  nor  is  there  in  the  oldest  literature  any 
hint  that  at  Jerusalem  or  among  the  Jews  there  was  any 
attempt  at  denial,  or  inquiry,  with  a  view  to  disproof, 
into  the  facts  of  the  case.  The  Christian  writers  are 
unanimous  in  setting  it  forth  as  the  one  fact  which  gives 
Christians  the  right  to  be  and  to  be  believed.  This  agree- 
ment is  the  more  remarkable  that  it  exists  amid  the 
most  pronounced  differences.  Parties  existed,  opposed 
schools  and  tendencies,  each  zealous  for  its  own  men  and 
doctrines.  But  though  they  differed  in  their  views  as  to 
the  person  of  Christ,  His  work.  His  relation  to  the  old 
economy.  His  authority  and  place  in  the  kingdom  of  God, 
they  all  affirmed  most  absolutely  His  Resurrection  from 
the  dead.  The  Petrine  and  the  Pauline  tendencies,  the 
Hebraistic  and  the  Hellenistic  parties,  the  men  who  held 
that  Jesus  had  respected  and  observed  the  law,  and  the 
men  who  held  that  He  had  utterly  aboHshed  it,  were  at 
one  in  the  belief  that  He  had  risen,  that  without  His 
Resurrection  faith  in  Him  were  vain.  And  what  does  the 
unanimity  so  remarkably  emphasized  signify  ?  That  every 
Christian  writer  and  every  community  they  represented 
believed  that  the  Resurrection  was  their  grand  creative 
fact,  the  event  to  which  they  owed  their  existence,  what 
entitled  them  to  live  and  claim  man's  faith.  This  fact 
lies  behind  their  doctrines,  is  their  common  source,  was 


THE  RESURRECTION.  351 

before  their  differences,  and  exists  amid  them  as  their 
one  bond  of  union.  Their  faith  is  a  witness  to  the 
action  of  the  event,  testifies  that  before  it  they  were  not, 
after  it  they  were,  and  without  it  they  had  entirely 
ceased  to  be.  And  this  testimony  history  corroborates  in 
a  wonderful  way.  Christianity,  as  the  oldest  documents 
prove,  was  not  a  secret  but  a  public  faith,  singularly  out- 
spoken and  aggressive.  Its  career  began  in  the  very 
city  where  its  founder  had  been  crucified  ;  and  there, 
where  the  hate  to  Him  was  deepest,  where  the  memory  of 
His  fate  must  have  been  most  vivid,  the  faith  in  His 
Resurrection  lived  a  fearless  and  victorious  life,  challeng- 
ing an  exposure  which  never  came,  invincible  before  the 
combined  interests  and  passions  of  priests  and  rulers. 
Grant  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  a  late  and  untrustworthy 
book,  yet  here  is  a  fact  no  criticism  can  touch : — Ten  years 
after  the  crucifixion  a  fierce  persecution  was  raging  at 
and  around  Jerusalem ; '  one  that  implied  that  the 
Christians  had  utterly  broken  with  Judaism,  and  were 
working  within  and  against  it  with  extraordinary  daring, 
activity,  and  success.  Not  only  was  no  charge  of  de- 
ception or  imposition  attempted  in  that  persecution,  but 
its  most  distinguished  leader  became  a  Christian  convert. 
And  the  ground  of  his  conversion  was  the  belief  that 
Christ  had  risen  from  the  dead. 

Now,  the  testimony  of  Paul  is  of  singular  force  and 
value.  It  is  twofold,  verbal  and  historical,  consists  of 
what  he  says  and  what  he  becomes  and  does.  The 
verbal  is  mainly  valuable  for  the  light  it  sheds  on  the 
historical  and  personal.  Let  us  put  the  case  : — A  new 
religion  has  risen  in  the  heart  of  Judaism,  denying  its 
authority,  renouncing  its  most  honoured  customs,  de- 
priving the  Jew  of  his  most  exclusive  privileges,  and 
looking  kindly  on  the  Gentiles.  Its  warrant  is  the 
■  Gal.  i.  13,  22,  23. 


352  STUDIES  IN  THE  LITE  OF  CHRIST. 

Resurrection  and  exaltation  of  the  Christ  the  priests 
had  crucified.  Now,  there  is  no  hate  like  religious  hate, 
and  religious  hate  is  deepest  where  the  kinship  is  most 
near  and  the  division  most  recent.  But  though  the  new 
religion  is  hated,  the  old  cannot  suppress  it.  The  priests 
had  the  will  but  not  the  power,  and  the  most  eminent  of 
the  Pharisees  is  significantly  hesitating  in  his  attitude,^ 
does  not  assail  the  Christians  as  his  party  had  assailed 
Christ,  but  leaves  them  alone,  as  if  half  convinced,  even 
against  his  will,  that  God  was  on  their  side.  In  this 
man's  school  there  is  a  strong,  resolute  spirit,  a  young 
man  fresh  from  Tarsus,  full  of  glowing  enthusiasm  for 
the  city  and  faith  of  his  fathers.  Apostasy  is  to  him  a 
hateful  thing,  and  the  Christians  seem  apostates,  daring, 
even  within  the  very  holy  city,  to  deny  Moses  and  be 
unfaithful  to  God.  He  sees  them  through  the  prejudices 
of  the  school,  and  holds  that  they  ought  to  be  dealt  with 
as  if  the  law  were  no  dead  letter,  but  a  living  power. 
The  law  commanded  that  the  man  who  denied  Moses 
should  be  stoned,  and  Saul,  with  the  courage  of  his  con- 
victions, was  prepared  to  obey  Moses.  The  first  that  fell 
was  Stephen,  but  the  success  in  this  case  only  made  Saul 
the  more  anxious  to  do  more.  He  "  made  havoc  of  the 
Church,"  haling  men  and  women  to  prison,  and,  Pharisee 
though  he  was,  asking  help  of  the  chief  priest.  But  now 
a  curious  thing  happened — actual  contact  with  the  per- 
secuted worked  a  change  in  the  persecutor.  Once  he 
confronted  them  in  the  flesh,  came  to  know  their  actual 
belief  and  behaviour,  he  was  so  moved  as  to  be  shaken 
out  of  his  old  faith  and  made  ready  to  receive  the  new. 
Now,  what  was  it  that  so  worked  on  him  ?  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  it  was  the  Christian  belief  in  the 
Resurrection.  It  was  this  belief  that  predisposed  him 
to  the  heavenly  vision.     This  belief  became  the  centre 

'  Acts  V.  34,  ffi 


THE  RESURRECTION.  353 

of  his  system ;  round  it  his  ideas  all  crystallized.  It 
revolutionized  his  notion  of  Jesus,  of  His  mission,  death, 
cross,  His  relation  to  the  law  ;  his  notion,  too,  of  God, 
of  His  purposes  and  relations  to  the  Jews  and  to  man- 
kind. There  never  was  a  completer  conversion,  a  more 
radical  and  penetrating  change.  And  he  was  not  a  man 
to  whom  change  was  easy.  His  was  not  a  flexible  nature, 
must  have  resisted  long,  yielded  reluctantly  and  with  a 
tremendous  shock.  And  his  words  show  that  he  had  not 
believed  without  anxious  searching  and  sifting.  He  had 
evidently  questioned  Peter,  as  evidently  inquired  of  the 
five  hundred.  He  speaks  like  a  man  who  knew  the  sur- 
vivors, who  had  known  those  fallen  asleep,  watching 
them  as  a  man  will  watch  those  to  whom  he  owes  his 
highest  spiritual  good.  Here,  then,  is  the  point :  can  this 
man  who  stood  so  near  the  event,  who  was  certainly  the 
keenest-eyed  and  loftiest-souled  of  all  the  men  who  did 
stand  near  it,  who  hated  it  with  passion,  who  came  to  it 
with  the  most  rooted  prejudices,  yet  was,  by  the  sheer 
strength  of  evidence,  compelled  to  believe  in  it,  to  the 
entire  change  of  his  spirit,  his  objects  of  faith,  his  pur- 
poses and  aims  in  life,  to  the  absolute  renunciation  of 
his  dearest  ambitions,  his  kin,  his  fame,  his  home — can 
this  man,  I  say,  with  all  the  splendid  reason  and  reality 
that  were  in  him,  and  the  work  he  achieved,  be  explained 
as  the  child  of  delusion,  the  dupe  of  illiterate  enthusiasts, 
who  were  themselves  the  dupes  of  their  own  excited 
fancies  and  morbid  nerves  ?  Were  he  so,  he  were  a 
greater  miracle  in  the  region  of  the  spirit  than  the 
Resurrection  in  the  region  of  nature. 

But  now,  turning  from  Paul,  let  us  look  at  the  other 
apostles.  They  share  his  certainty,  his,  indeed,  being 
the  creature  of  theirs;  but  it  is  not  their  words,  but 
themselves  we  wish  to  cite  as  witnesses,  their  testimony 
being   strongest    where   it   is   unconscious   and   indirect. 


354  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST, 

We  know  what  they  are  in  the  Gospels,  fishermen,  like 
their  class,  ignorant,  superstitious,  weak,  impulsive. 
Their  ideas  are  Jewish ;  not  as  refined  in  the  schools, 
but  as  vulgarized  and  conceived  in  the  village.  The 
only  kingdom  they  expect  is  the  ancient  commonwealth 
restored.  Their  notions  of  the  future  world  are  the 
shadowiest ;  what  is  not  realized  here  and  in  the  old 
political  forms  they  cannot  understand.  They  hardly 
know  that  there  is  a  great  world  beyond  Judaea  and 
Galilee,  or  know  it  only  to  hate  the  foreigner  who  has 
conquered,  or  despise  the  Gentile  because  he  is  no  Jew. 
But  now  these  men  experience  a  twofold  change  :  (i) 
they  believe  what  before  they  had  shown  no  capacity 
even  to  conceive,  that  their  crucified  Master  had  risen 
from  the  dead ;  and  (2)  they  become,  because  of  this 
belief,  the  apostles  of  a  new  religion,  the  agents  of  the 
most  splendid  change  that  was  ever  worked  in  the  faith 
and  conduct  of  man.  It  was  an  altogether  wonderful 
thing — the  change,  the  exaltation  of  spirit  was  simply 
miraculous.  We  know  what  the  fishermen  on  our  own 
coasts  are  capable  of;  we  know  what  these  Galilean 
fishermen  have  achieved.  In  their  original  state  the 
latter  had  a  narrower  range  of  ideas,  more  limited 
ambitions,  grosser  notions  of  religion,  of  God  and  man, 
than  even  the  former ;  yet  these  Galileans  were  so  trans- 
formed and  inspired  as  to  conceive  and  proceed  to  realize 
a  scheme  of  conquest  far  sublimer  than  had  ever  dawned 
on  the  mind  of  Alexander  or  Caesar.  And  what  caused 
the  change  ?  If  they  themselves  are  to  be  believed,  the 
Resurrection  and  the  ideas  it  worked  in  them.  If  they 
had  created  the  faith,  they  had  remained  unchanged ;  if 
it  created  them,  the  change  is  explicable,  and  finds  an 
adequate  cause.  Without  it  they  remain  the  greatest 
riddles  in  history;  with  it  they  and  their  achievements 
become  alike  natural.     The  Resurrection  is   a  sufficient 


THE  RESURRECTION.  355 

reason   for   the   men ;    but   without   it    the  men   are   no 
sufficient  reason  for  Christianity. 

But  there  is  another  line  of  indirect  evidence  quite  as 
significant  as  the  last;  the  attitude  of  the  Jews  to  the 
belief  is  quite  as  remarkable  as  the  change  worked  by  the 
belief  in  the  apostles.  The  Jews  hated  Christianity  even 
more  than  they  had  hated  Christ,  and  scrupled  at  no  means 
that  promised  its  suppression.  They  were  then,  as  now, 
an  ubiquitous  race,  living  in  all  lands,  trading  in  all  cities, 
a  separate  community,  touching  the  Gentiles  everywhere, 
mingling  with  them  nowhere,  yet  remaining  in  their 
dispersion  Jews  still,  bound  to  Jerusalem  by  subtlest 
affinities,  familiar  with  her  story,  with  all  that  concerned 
her  present  and  her  past.  They  had  then,  as  now,  a 
wonderful  faculty  for  searching  out  profitable  secrets,  knew 
how  to  make  their  way  into  the  heart  of  social  mysteries, 
and  how  to  use  them  for  what  they  esteemed  the  best. 
Much  of  the  dislike  they  then  awakened  was  due  to  this 
special  gift  of  theirs,  and  their  skill  in  working  it  so  as  to 
accomplish  their  own  ends,  without  too  much  delicacy  as 
to  the  means.  Now  it  was  to  the  Jews  the  apostles  first 
went,  and  from  the  Jews  their  troubles  came.  They  raised 
riots,  fomented  the  ignorant  passions  of  the  Gentiles, 
persecuted  the  Christian  preachers  from  city  to  city, 
poisoned  the  atmosphere  around  them  with  insidious 
slanders,  and  even  dragged  them  before  magistrates  who 
cared  nothing  for  the  subtle  points  of  Jewish  law.  But 
one  thing,  so  far  as  can  be  discovered  from  the  oldest 
literature,  they  never  did — they  never  denied  the  reality  of 
the  Resurrection,  or  even  questioned  it.^  If  they  could 
*  This  may  seem  a  very  strong  statement  in  face  of  the  narrative, 
Matthew  xxviii.  11-15,  and  what  we  know  from  other  sources  as  to 
Jewish  statements.  The  Toledoth  Jeschu  distinctly  repeats  the  story 
as  to  the  theft  of  the  body  (Eisenmenger,  Neuentdeckt.  Judejithufn, 
i.  pp.  190,  ff.).  Justin  Martyn  represents  the  Jews  as  proclaiming 
throughout  the  world  that  the  disciples  stole  Jesus  by  night  from  the 


356  STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

have  proved  that  Christ  had  not  risen  from  the  dead  His 
religion  would  have  died  before  the  proof.  And  if  such 
proof  was  possible  to  any  one,  it  was  possible  to  them.  The 
scene  of  the  Resurrection  had  been  their  own  capital ;  its 
rulers  had  been  the  authors  of  the  death,  and  were  certain 
to  be  most  suspicious  and  watchful  of  the  disciples  in  the 
days  that  followed  their  loss.  The  children  of  the  Disper- 
sion lived  everywhere  in  communication  with  Jerusalem, 
and  every  feast  would  bring  fanatics  to  the  city,  determined 
to  put  down  this  new  and  spreading  apostasy,  each  eagerly 
demanding  of  the  chief  priests  how  it  was  to  be  done. 
But  here  is  the  extraordinary  matter — this  adroitest,  most 
dispersed,  yet  most  concentrated  of  peoples,  urged  by  the 
strongest  of  human  hates,  willing  to  gratify  it  by  means 
party  passion  can  always  justify,  daintily  leave  untouched 
and  unquestioned  the  creative  and  cardinal  fact  of  the 
religion  they  abhor.  How  can  this  be  explained  ?  The 
fact  was  not  concealed;  the  men  who  declared  themselves 
its  witnesses  testified  everywhere  concerning  it,  offered 
themselves  for  examination,  asked  that  their  narrative  be 
compared  with  the  events  it  professed  to  describe.  Yet 
the  men  who  heard  their  testimony,  and  were  most 
interested  in  discrediting  it,  never  attempted  to  do  so,  but 
allowed  it  to  go  throughout  the  world  unchallenged  and 

tomb  {Dialog-lie  with  Trypho,  c.  cviii.).  Celsus  makes  his  Jew  insinu- 
ate the  same  thing,  and  subtly  suggests  as  alternative  explanations 
the  fanatical  phantasy  of  the  woman  who  first  persuaded  herself  that 
she  had  seen  Jesus,  or  the  temperaments  of  the  disciples  predisposed 
to  believe  in  it,  or  their  wish  which  was  father  to  their  thought  (Origen, 
Contra  Cels.,  ii.  55,  63,  68,  79).  There  were  thus  widely  circulated 
stories  and  theories  which  negatived  the  Resurrection,  the  most  promi- 
nent being  the  one  which  we  find  in  Matthew.  But  all  this  in  no  way 
touches  the  statement  of  the  text.  Our  oldest  and  our  most  certainly 
authentic  literature — the  great  Pauline  epistles — show  no  trace  of  such 
stories,  nor  do  they  seem  ever  to  have  so  met  him  as  to  have 
demanded  either  serious  or  incidental  notice.  And  this  is  the  signi- 
ficant point ;  late  rumours  are  but  myths,  expressive  of  the  action  0/ 
mind,  not  of  the  transactions  of  history. 


THE  RESURRECTION.  357 

undenied.  Why  ?  In  the  attitude  of  Gamaliel  there  is  a 
suspicion  that  the  apostles  may  be  right,  that  God  may, 
after  all,  be  on  their  side.  Put  his  suspicion  alongside  the 
avoidance  by  the  Jews  everywhere  of  the  main  issue,  an 
issue  they  had  every  opportunity  and  inducement  to  meet 
openly  and  directly,  and  does  not  the  conclusion  seem 
inevitable  that  the  Resurrection  was  left  unijuestioned 
because  it  could  not  be  disproved,  and  because  discreet 
silence  was  at  least  better  than  a  dangerous  inquiry  ?  So 
interpreted,  the  silence  of  the  Jews  is  as  significant  as  the 
speech  of  the  Christians. 

But,  now,  there  is  another  point  that  must  here  be 
emphasized  :  the  speech  that  was  unchallenged  by  the 
Jews  was  most  offensive  to  the  Gentiles.  For  a  resur- 
rection from  the  dead  was  not  a  credible  thing  to  the 
then  world,  did  not  harmonize  with  its  prejudices  and 
superstitions.  Such  a  harmony  has  turned  many  a 
happy  fancy  into  a  trusted  fact ;  but  though  the  contrary 
has  often  been  assumed,  it  did  not  exist  here.  To  preach 
the  Resurrection  was  not  to  make  faith  easier,  but  rather 
more  difficult.  Experience  seemed  to  give  it  emphatic 
contradiction  ;  no  man  had  any  associations  that  could 
explain  or  suggest  it.  The  unheard-of  event  was  contrary 
to  experience,  was  twin-sister  to  the  impossible.  And  so 
at  first  it  was  a  burden  weighing  down  the  gospel  rather 
than  a  wing  favouring  its  flight.  The  attitude  of  the 
Sadducee  was  typical ;  the  very  mention  of  the  Resur- 
rection raised  his  anger  or  his  scorn.  The  Pharisees, 
indeed,  believed  in  it,  but  it  was  under  conditions  and 
with  limitations  that  would  make  them  only  the  mere 
utterly  incredulous  as  to  Christ's.  His  was  solitary, 
unattended  by  a  renovated  earth  and  a  restored  Israel ; 
an  event  altogether  too  spiritual  in  its  nature  and  results 
to  find  a  place  among  their  gross  ideas.  When  Paul 
named  it  to  the  Athenians,  they  greeted  it  with  a  mockery 


358         STUDIES  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  CHRIST. 

that  brought  his  speech  to  a  sudden  and  undesigned  end.' 
Festus,  when  he  heard  of  it,  thought  Paul  mad.  ^  The 
greatest  intellectual  difficulties  of  the  primitive  churches 
were  connected  with  the  belief,  and  what  it  involved. 
Indeed,  so  insuperable  were  these  that  Paul  had  to 
invoke  the  evidence  and  authority  of  the  other  apostles 
in  its  behalf.  It  is  the  one  case  in  which  he  does  so, 
and  his  doing  so  in  this  case  alone  shows  the  strength  of 
the  prejudices  against  which  he  had  to  contend.  Now 
what  does  this  signify  ?  That  only  the  absolute  certainty 
as  to  the  reality  of  the  Resurrection  can  explain  the  per- 
sistence of  the  belief;  that  without  the  reality  of  the  event 
the  apostles  could  have  been  under  no  temptation  either 
to  imagine  or  stand  by  the  belief.  Take  a  parallel  case — 
the  crucifixion.  It  rests  on  no  ampler  evidence  than  the 
Resurrection;  the  one  is  no  whit  better  authenticated 
than  the  other.  Yet  no  man  has  ever  questioned  it. 
And  why  ?  Because  it  is  so  unlike  what  any  one  would 
consciously  or  unconsciously  invent  as  the  kind  of  death 
suffered  by  a  person  he  loved  as  a  Saviour,  and  believed 
in  as  the  Son  of  God.  Yet  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say, 
the  idea  of  the  Resurrection  was  as  alien  to  the  then  reason 
of  the  world  as  the  idea  of  the  crucifixion  was  abhorrent ; 
and  so  the  tenacity  with  which  the  apostles  held  by  their 
belief  was  due  not  to  the  favour  with  which  it  was 
received,  but  to  the  strength  of  their  own  convictions-^ 
the  invincible  consciousness  that  the  Christ  had  risen, 
and  had,  as  risen,  spoken  to  them  and  been  with  them. 

These  still  remain  but  a  fragment  of  our  evidences. 
The  power  of  the  belief  is  made  manifest  by  the  place 
it  occupied,  the  system  that  crystallized  around  it.  All 
Christianity  confesses  the  belief,  runs  back  into  it,  and 
what  is  most  ancient  is  here  most  strong.  On  this  point 
institutions,  customs,  doctrines,  hopes,  and  fears  are  alike 
*  Acts  xvii.  31,  32.  *  Ibid.  xxvi.  24. 


THE  RESURRECTION.  359 

unanimous  and  emphatic.  Remove  the  Resurrection 
from  primitive  Christian  theology  and  its  speech,  and  they 
would  cease  to  be  coherent  or  intelligible.  There  is 
nothing  older  in  Christianity  than  the  Lord's  day, 
nothing  more  universal  than  the  Supper  and  Baptism  ; 
yet  without  the  Resurrection,  its  ideas  and  associations, 
these  are  utterly  inexplicable  —  without  any  historical 
source  or  significance.  On  it,  too,  hope  lived — all  the 
conceptions  and  reflections  of  what  was  to  be  grew  out  of 
it  and  stood  clustered  round  it.  Approach  the  question 
from  any  side,  and  it  only  the  more  appears  that  without 
the  risen  Christ  the  Church  is  without  a  source  or  a 
cause.  If  historical  evidence  is  sufficient  anywhere,  it  is 
here ;  for  the  written  testimony  of  the  evangelists  is  our 
weakest  testimony,  almost  perishes  before  the  mightier 
witnessing  of  those  splendid  facts  that  marked  the  birth 
of  the  new  religion,  the  building  of  the  City  of  God.  If 
men  object  to  it  as  a  stupendous  miracle,  too  immense  a 
departure  from  the  ways  of  Nature  to  be  believed  by  men 
who  observe  Nature  and  mark  the  operation  of  her  uni- 
form and  inflexible  laws,  let  us  say  to  them,  **Look  above 
Nature  ;  there  is  a  higher  and  diviner  order.  Nature  is 
not  an  end,  is  only  a  means  :  she  expresses  her  Maker's 
mind  and  exists  for  her  Maker's  ends.  What  is  necessary 
to  His  ends  is  according  to  His  nature,  though  it  may 
seem  opposed  to  man's.  Interpret  the  universe  through 
the  idea  of  God,  place  God  and  man  in  living  relations 
to  each  other,  let  the  conditions  necessary  to  the  reali- 
zation of  these  relations  be  fairly  conceived,  and  there 
will  be  the  consciousness  of  an  order  sublimer  than  any 
Nature  reveals;  an  order  which  not  only  has  room  for 
the  Resurrection,  but  demands  it,  to  the  end  that  eternal 
grace  may  reign  through  righteousness  unto  the  glory  of 
the  Eternal.**  _«_ 

(1) 


